The British Quiz Association has established the Fact Controllers in order to set the standards of excellence in quiz question verification. We have asked a number of Questions Producers to tell us what verifiers do well and what they could improve on and we have included their observations and requests in our verifier training programme and in the ‘Verifier Handbook’ that all Fact Controllers are given.
All Fact Controllers are fully trained and we have produced the ‘Verifier Handbook’ as a reference manual listing such things as useful verifier sources, how to set out comments, and detailing the process for verifying a question and its answers. Verifying isn’t simply a matter of checking an answer is correct. It’s much more complicated than that. We want to be sure that questions are thoroughly challenged.
We have also produced a ‘Verifier Style Guide’ to help ensure consistency with the way the text of a question is handled. This can be tailored for individual shows and is available to all our customers and can be passed on to their question setters.
In addition to this, we have written a ‘Contestant Sheet’ for our customers which can be given to contestants to reduce the need for clumsy and unnecessary wording in questions.