Welcome to ORCA (Opinion Research Center of Afghanistan), ORCA helps you make better decisions
ORCA, licensed by the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is the largest full service research center operating in the areas of market research, media and opinion research, qualitative and quantitative research independently in all 34 of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan by highly professional and committed national and international specialists who have their unique expertise in different areas of research world wide and conducted award-winning national surveys across the country.
We have excellent practical and in depth understanding of Afghanistan’s peoples, cultures, religions, conditions, and geography cumulated over the last five years of field research experience of our staff in Afghanistan. We have on-going well-tested working solutions for most of the research challenges in areas where extensive illiteracy, hostility to research and strict cultural restrictions on access to households heavily exist. We have on-going well-tested working solutions for most of the research challenges in insurgents-led areas. We ensure quality field work in all provinces of Afghanistan taking in to account each provinces’ unique situation so that each has significant impact on methodologies and weightings applied and the strategic and tactical analysis in the research projects. This therefore, guarantees the best quality of findings/results for our clients.
Based on the lessons we learned in the last 5 years of research experience in Afghanistan, we managed to achieve:
- Practically tested efficient and effective manuals for field interviewers, field monitoring and back-check/control teams, coders and data entry operators.
- Network of over 500 experienced, multi-ethnic and gender-balanced interviewers, managed by 34 Provincial Field Supervisors, and
- Network of over 500 local monitoring agents (half males and half females) managed by a team of 34 Monitoring Supervisors in all districts of Afghanistan.
Our field team network is highly trained in research techniques and methods with regular training updates and survey specific training when needed. Our team is well-prepaid for outstanding performance even in the most challenging regions of Afghanistan.
Training sessions are held separately for the field team and the monitoring/control team and they receive separate instructions from our head quarter to avoid any possible conflict of interest.
At ORCA we take all measures to make sure we deliver on our promises.
Our head quarters are located centrally in Kabul equipped with computer networks, in-house data entry and analysis including audio and video analysis of qualitative data such as focus groups and in depth interview discussions. Our regional offices are located in Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad, and Kandahar Provinces and we aim to open 6 more sub-offices till the end of the current year 2008.
We highly encourage and welcome our clients to review our methodology and observe our field work.
1.3 Corporate Principles:
1.3.1 Vision:
The vision of ORCA is to establish a culture of research for demand driven development in Afghanistan
1.3.2 Mission:
The mission of ORCA is to:
• Provide high quality and reliable research that informs decision makers in reconstruction and development,
• Provide credible market research about the business and investment,
• Practice social responsibility through small demand driven development projects out of our profits.
1.3.3 Values:
Honesty: We communicate openly and realistically with each other and our clients. When things go wrong, we are honest about our mistakes, and work together to find immediate solutions that ensure the causes and successful solutions are recorded in our ‘lessons learned’ database.
Quality: We are highly committed to deliver on our promises. Strategic outputs are delivered with exceptional quality and value through testing with internationally recognized methods and techniques, capacity building and appropriate measures.
Respect for ORCA and Individuals: We strive to work as hard as possible and look forward to all current and future challenges and opportunities to maintain our trade name ‘ORCA’ prestigious in the market.
Regardless of ethnicity, color, beliefs, and gender we respect each other literally, with dignity and equity.
We respect our respondents who give us their valuable time freely.
