Update: The QI user survey to assess the demand for quality infrastructure services

This blog post by Christian Schoen is an update of QI4D post published on 19 February 2023.

Insights about an economy’s present and future demand for quality assurance services are essential for developing a national quality infrastructure (NQI). Gaining a clear understanding of the needs and demand for QI services in a country complements the analysis of supply-side data, resulting in more sound decisions on QI development programs and their scope. A proper demand assessment is critical to both the capacity-building of individual QI Institutions and the identification of effective reforms for the overall NQI in a country. Although the need for demand-driven NQI development is emphasised by funding agencies such as UNIDO, PTB or the World Bank, the demand side is still often neglected.

High-quality information on the use of QI services is scarce. One notable exception is the ISO Survey, which measures the number of companies in a country across various economic sectors that have certified ISO management systems in various forms. However, even these statistics do not provide insight into how users evaluate the services.

Therefore, specific tools are required to understand and analyse the NQI’s demand side. In this context, the Calidena method is a comprehensive demand assessment tool that can help study the QI needs of specific economic sectors and value chains [see QI4D blog post from 12 December 2021]. A suitable instrument for a more rapid, less resource-intensive NQI demand-side assessment is a survey of the primary users of QI services. These users fall into two broad groups: enterprises, which express the voluntary, market-driven demand for QI, and regulators, which drive the mandatory demand for QI through the technical regulations they set and enforce. A user survey can target either group or both to learn about their knowledge, use, and perceived quality of QI services. The enterprise survey is described below, followed by the regulator variant.

Surveying enterprises as QI users

For the adequate design of an enterprise survey, decisions need to be made about the survey content (questionnaire), the structure of the targeted respondent group (sample matrix), the size of the respondent group (sample size) and the source of respondents’ names and contact data (sample framework).

The main survey instrument, the survey questionnaire, should be tailor-made, context-specific and designed jointly with the client and the leading NQI institutions in a country. The latter should be involved in the survey’s execution and analysis to enable future replication. The answers to the survey questions help align NQI service offerings with user requirements and expectations, thereby providing essential input for improving an NQI system.

The questions should focus on users' views and needs regarding QI services. In a 2022 QI user survey in Malaysia (as part of a project funded by EU ARISE Plus and implemented by the International Trade Centre/ITC), we integrated elements as follows:

• General information about the enterprise (size, sector, export activities, location, quality issues)

• Use and relevance of standards

• Use, relevance, availability and assessment of conformity assessment services

• Importance of accreditation of conformity assessment bodies (CABs)

• Knowledge of technical regulations and market surveillance

In Palestine in 2025, we added the elements of innovation, sustainability, digitalisation, gender, and inclusion to the survey questionnaire and analysis.

Such a survey usually targets business owners, business managers, and entrepreneurs, as they are best suited in their respective companies to answer QI-related questions. The selection of the type of companies to be surveyed is crucial for the survey's outcome. Structuring the sample for a QI survey involves decisions about the coverage of sector affiliation and company size (using the country's prevailing definitions of company size). Further possible stratifications could include the legal form, location within a country (if levelling up territorial QI service access is an objective), and female versus male ownership status (if gender-related inclusiveness of QI service access is targeted). Ideally, the sample structure fully represents the real economy's structure and composition for all the aspects above.

Based on the stratifications, it is possible to build a sample matrix. The more stratifications are selected, the more multi-dimensional the sample matrix becomes. The following table shows the simple two-dimensional sample matrix used in Malaysia's QI survey.

	Services	Trade	Construc-tion	Manufac-turing	Agricul-ture	Mining	Structure by size
Structure by sector	43%	6%	6%	40%	4%	1%
Total	182	27	26	166	16	3	420
Large	53	3	7	72	8	0	34%
Medium	35	7	12	46	1	3	25%
Small	63	14	7	43	4	0	31%
Micro	31	3	0	5	3	0	10%

Table 1: Sample Matrix used in Malaysia’s QI user survey

Source: [3]

The sample size is calculated using an appropriate standard formula that takes the selected enterprise population as a point of departure. For instance, the methodology applied by the World Bank Enterprise Survey could be adopted, yielding a large enough sample to conduct statistically robust analyses with precision of at least 7.5% at a 90% confidence level [1].

Finally, there are the challenges of identifying the actual companies that match the sample matrix composition and encouraging managers, owners, or quality managers to complete the survey form. A typical source could be a sector-specific or general business directory listing company names, relevant details, and contact information. Depending on the survey mode (e.g., face-to-face interviews using paper or tablets, phone-based, or online), such a business directory (sample framework) can be utilised in different ways to identify and contact potential respondents.

For the enterprise surveys in Malaysia and Palestine, we used online questionnaires. We cooperated with leading NQI institutions and selected business associations to reach customers and member enterprises to complete the questionnaire. In such a case, however, it is challenging to realise a precise target structure, even though we managed to get close to our respective sample matrices. Also, when approaching enterprises through NQI institutions and business membership organisations that work with NQI institutions, a particular bias in the (self-)selection of responding firms is unavoidable.

Quite frequently, national QI bodies involved in an NQI assessment initially hesitate to consult their users. However, we often saw companies that knew about and used QI services rating them positively for availability, quality, and price (see Figure 1). At the same time, a significant proportion of companies, especially SMEs, are unfamiliar with QI, its services, or even the concept of QI. This is an important result that could lead to intensified QI awareness campaigns and SME outreach events.

Figure 1: User assessment of conformity assessment services in Malaysia in 2022

Source:.[3]

Surveying regulators as QI users

Enterprises are not the only significant users of QI; regulators also play a major role. Their responsibility for safeguarding health, safety, the environment, and fair markets relies on reliable technical processes and institutions. Regulators typically utilise QI in four common ways:

• Regulators reference standards in technical regulations and laws

• They rely on metrology to make legal limits measurable and enforceable

• They rely on accreditation to trust testing, inspection and certification results and

• They use conformity assessment to enforce compliance.

QI thus provides regulators with much of the technical backbone they need to implement their policies and fulfil their mandates. Regulators also differ from firms in one important respect: they are simultaneously users andco-shapers of QI. They serve on standards and technical regulation committees, adapt international standards to the national system, and define norms for their sectors. Surveying them, therefore, captures a demand channel that an enterprise survey alone misses: the mandatory demand created by regulations across the economy.

A recent regulator QI user survey in Palestine (2025), conducted by the Ministry of Industry with the Palestine Standards Institute and PTB, targeted regulatory authorities at national and sectoral levels, covering food safety, environment, health, energy, transport, construction and related fields [3]. The questionnaire was organised around modules adapted to a regulator's perspective:

• The agency's sector and role in the regulatory process (policy/legislation, technical enforcement, market surveillance)

• Participation in the governance and advisory structures of QI institutions

• Use of standards in technical regulations

• Reliance on metrology and traceable measurement for enforcement

• Use, accreditation and assessment of conformity assessment services

• Acceptance of foreign test reports and certificates

• Market surveillance practices and their links to QI institutions

• Consideration of gender aspects in standards and regulations

• Service gaps and domestically unavailable conformity assessment services

• Anticipated future demand and priorities for QI support

• 
  

The sampling logic differs fundamentally from the enterprise case. The relevant regulatory population in a country is small and well-known, so there is no need for a stratified sampling matrix or a statistical sample size calculation. Instead, the survey is a quasi-census of the relevant authorities, namely 12 participating ministries and authorities in Palestine. Respondents are institutions rather than individuals, and they often answer as a team after internal consultation, which shifts the analysis toward qualitative depth rather than statistical inference.

Figure 2: Regulator assessment of conformity assessment services in Palestine in 2025

Source: [4]

This also shapes how the results should be read. With a small number of institutional respondents, findings reflect considered institutional opinion and impressions rather than individual experiences. Where regulators describe a service as "limited" or "slow", the assessment captures their institutional expectations and perceptions, see exemplary results in Figure 2. Turning that into actionable conclusions usually requires defining baselines. A regulator survey is best understood as a first, broad-picture overview that frames a more detailed analysis.

For this reason, a validation workshop is a valuable closing step of the survey process. In Palestine, a workshop with QI stakeholders and regulators reviewed the survey results, corrected misinterpretations and discussed suitable policy measures. It revealed, for example, that the perceived shortage of accredited laboratories was less of a constraint than assumed (a substantial number of laboratories are in fact accredited) and that the real issue was the weak networking between accredited labs and their users. Validation ensures accurate interpretation of survey feedback and supports conclusions with stakeholder insights.

Conclusions

The QI user survey experiences in Malaysia, Palestine, the Dominican Republic and other locations have shown that such a demand-analysis instrument is a necessary complement to a supply-side assessment of QI institutions using instruments such as the RDT [see QI4D blog post from 9 January 2023] [2]. Both supply- and demand-side perspectives are necessary to gain a deep understanding of a QI system. Enterprises typically have a critical view of the quality assurance of their products and services, as the availability, accessibility, and reliability of QI services directly impact their market access and competitiveness.

A complete demand picture, however, requires listening to both user groups: the voluntary, market-driven demand expressed by enterprises and the mandatory demand that regulators generate and enforce through technical regulation. Both user groups should participate in annual or biannual surveys to monitor changes in their needs and preferences.

The survey methodologies used to collect these views must be robust, replicable, and well-founded. A QI user survey should not be a one-off exercise. It should be conducted regularly across sectors and regions, and with both types of QI users in a country, to assess satisfaction with existing services and identify new service requirements. Under these conditions, survey results could significantly help improve an NQI system incrementally and continuously.

[1] The World Bank Enterprise Survey website

[2] PTB QI Toolkit

[3] Harmes-Liedtke, U., Schoen, C., Bathmanathan, V., Ramkissoon, A. (2022), “Assessment of Malaysia’s National Quality Infrastructure”, ITC, unpublished.

[4] Schoen, C. (2026), Surveys of Enterprises & Regulators as Users of QI Services in Palestine, Results and Recommendations. Palestine, Supporting the National Quality Infrastructure, PTB, 16 March 2026.