The Pell Grant Quality Control Study of 1982-83 was designed to identify program error rate, to measure the impact of increased validation activity, and to propose corrective actions to reduce the misallocation of program funds. A sample of approximately 4,000 students was drawn from a stratified random sample of 317 participating institutions. The results shoed that Pell Grant recipients in 1982-83 were granted 13 percent more than they should have been, although both student and institutional error dropped from 1980-81. The study confirmed that institutions complied with the revised validation requirements for the Pell Grant program in 1982-83. Volume 3 of this study reports on the procedures and methods used in the investigation. It includes: (1) sample section (sampling plan, sampling frame, selection of students from sample institutions); (2) institutional visits (data collectors, scheduling, training, field supervision, etc.); (3) student and parent data collection (supervisor and interviewer training, field operations, the Automated Survey Control System, secondary data collection); (4) data processing (institutional data, individual data); (5) data analysis (best value selection, detailed research questions, statistical analysis, control groups); and (6) survey response rates (institutional response rates, student and parent survey responses, variance estimates). (Author/LB)