About Balcostics Research
A Jamaican research firm in Mandeville. We collect survey data across all 14 parishes, as prime contractor or as a local partner.
Balcostics Limited, trading as Balcostics Research, was incorporated in 2011. The office is Unit 10, QVilla Plaza, 7-9 Villa Road, Mandeville, Manchester, Jamaica. Phone (876) 964-4046 or (876) 314-4543. Email research@balcostics.com.
We are Jamaican-owned and privately held. Procurement identifiers on file are DUNS 816442319 and SAM.gov UEI RDRZNB17HGL7. We are registered with the Office of the Information Commissioner under the Data Protection Act 2020. The registration fee is not yet payable. Our data protection officer is Abi-Gaye White-Thomas.
What we do
We collect data. The modes are face-to-face on tablets (CAPI), telephone (CATI), and paper (PAPI), plus focus-group logistics and key informant interviews. We program questionnaires, clean files, support weights under the project manager, write codebooks, and key paper forms. We also run myVoice, the online panel and Android field collector described on myVoice surveys.
Clients are research firms, donors, ministries and companies that want the fieldwork done in Jamaica without building a field team. Recent work includes UNICEF MICS 2022 as prime field contractor, the Child Protection Compact as local partner to GeoPoll and then EnCompass, and a 2023 teaming role on the World Bank Group Enterprise Survey. The case studies name the role on each job.
How we work
A survey follows six steps: instrument review, CAPI or CATI build, training and a pilot, supervised fieldwork, cleaning and a codebook, then secure delivery. The same steps scale from a few hundred interviews to a national household round. Training rooms in Kingston and Manchester are booked on demand. CAPI devices are ours. Vehicles are arranged per job.
We say prime when we held the field contract, and sub or teaming partner when we worked under another firm. The interviewer and supervisor pool is island-wide, hired and trained for the survey.
The team
Five people run the firm. Interviewers are contracted per project and are not listed here.
Luwayne Thomas, Managing Director. With the firm since 2011. MSc Economics, University of the West Indies. Project manager for MICS 2022. Works in SPSS, Stata, R, SurveyCTO and CSPro. He leads survey design and analysis.
Abi-Gaye White-Thomas, co-founder. With Balcostics since March 2012. Attorney-at-law, and attorney at Balcostics Law since 2016. Field logistics, focus-group moderation, and data protection officer.
Cordoan Thomas, CAPI and data manager. BSc ICT. With Balcostics since 2015. Tablets, skip logic, questionnaire testing and the integrity of the file.
Abigay Sergeant, research officer. Research assistance, CATI, and second moderator on qualitative work.
Yana-Kaye White, project finance. CPA. With Balcostics since 2011.
Frame construction and weight computation, when a job needs them, are supported under the project manager.
Balcostics Group
Balcostics Law (balcosticslaw.com) is a separate business and a separate data controller, the sole practice of attorney Abi-Gaye White-Thomas, and it prepares short-term field-staff contracts.
myVoice (myvoice.page) is the survey platform built by Balcostics. The panel had 6,063 active members on 1 October 2026. It is not a probability sample.
For a fieldwork quote, use the contact page. For the respondent-data standard, read data protection. The website's own notice is the privacy notice.
Leadership
Economist (MSc, UWI). Project manager for MICS 2022. Leads survey design and analysis.
Co-founder. Runs field logistics and focus groups, and oversees how respondent data is handled.
With Balcostics since 2015. Tablet programming, skip logic, questionnaire testing and data integrity.
Research assistance, CATI and second moderator on qualitative work.
Last updated 1 Oct 2026.