6 Steps to Perfect Qual

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Step 3: Fieldwork & Data Collection

When you back your fieldwork and data collection with the latest technology, you can’t go wrong.

Download the latest L&E trust guide to access new (and go-to) qualitative research techniques, along with the in-the-moment tools, video analytics, and other technology they run on. In this paper we’ll also share practical tips in choosing the right facility and creating an optimal research environment for participants.

This paper includes:

• Emerging fieldwork techniques (and the technology they run on)
• Practical tips on making your participants and clients comfortable on site
• How to deliver an environment that will optimize data collection
• Strategy for choosing the right facility

To continue reading, download our latest white paper by clicking here (no form to fill out).

Quantitative and Qualitative – Not Much Longer.

Most that have been in the research industry for more than a couple of years have experienced the following situation as we’ve sat behind the glass with our client:

• Marketing: Did you hear what that person just said. That’s brilliant. That’s our solution.
• Researcher: That was good, but it’s just one voice. We are exploring right now. We’ll validate this idea in the next phase.
• Marketing: I think we have our answer.
  

This is an overt oversimplification for illustration purposes, but the reality is often not far off point. The problem really comes from the alignment of an idea that has been uncovered in qualitative research and the marketing manager’s predisposition to a particular solution. Add several weeks in order for the manager to advocate before all the results are in – and researchers frequently find that the “answer” has been acted on before the research is completed.

Reducing or eliminating the time from exploration to validation has been a goal of research for many years. We’ve been through quant/qual to explore the results of quantitative research through qualitative exploration with a subset of respondents (or vice versa). Communities offer some of this capability and there have been others as well, but they have all left some gaps.

Several newer types of tools have improved our capabilities to address traditionally qualitative topics at the scale of quantitative research. These tools can be roughly broken into three categories; methodologies, crowd-sourced approaches, or approaches built on artificial intelligence. Several approaches use multiple categories, but are usually dominated by one category.

• In terms of methodologies, arguably the most important advancements have been made in emotional measurement, particularly implicit. All aspects of a brand should be aligned to a promise, and the execution of the brand experience should be aligned to make good on that promise. Emotional measurement allows us to understand how the brand is aligning itself to the heart of the consumer. Until recently, exploring and validating emotions was not only difficult, but was disconnected from the time it took to do each. New methodologies can do both, at scale, and cost-efficiently. The methodologies are drawn from traditional tools in psychology and marketing research, but adapted for speed and scale by technology.
• Crowd-sourcing is a tool that has been around for hundreds of years – but has come into its own the past few years. The premise that the crowd has capabilities that a more limited pool does not have is applicable to a number of problems qualitative research has typically addressed. Ideation, concept evaluation, marketing communications, and even competitive assessment can be addressed both qualitatively and quantitatively at the same time through tools like prediction markets, mobile ethnography, and some communities.
• Artificial intelligence is the newest tool and the one with perhaps the most potential to disrupt the line between exploration and validation. These tools can analyze large amounts of data coming in various forms (images, videos, and text analysis – voice is still a little far from practical as of this posting). The analysis can be near real time – allowing for the automated development of a follow up hypothesis, data gathering and analysis of that hypothesis. And so on. Sound familiar? All of this can be done with hundreds of respondents.

Many of these approaches will change over the next three to five years as technology allows continued improvements in access to people and speed of analysis. Artificial intelligence will have similar changes, primarily in the quality and nuance of the analysis. These improvements, and others happening in the industry, will make the difference between qualitative and quantitative research a false distinction.

Recently, technology has given marketers many new and innovative ways to tap in the customer psyche and create a stronger, more visceral understanding of the marketplace. And while these new market research tools have great promise, none has yet taken the place of the traditional focus groups in delivering valuable insight. As shown in the 2015 Greenbook Research Industry Trends (GRIT) report, 79% of respondents reported using qualitative research in the previous year – and traditional focus groups maintain their position as the most used qualitative methodology. In total, 68% of 2015 GRIT respondents reported using traditional, face-to-face focus groups, up from 59% in 2014.

 

To be sure, periodically some “expert” declares focus groups dead – or at least dying – and advocates for their removal from the marketing research tool kit. And just as inevitably, marketers continue to ignore these so-called “experts” and use focus groups to develop stunning and exciting customer insights that deliver business success and profits.

The Internet, social media, digital technologies, video and graphics – all of these trends have changed the way we communicate and conduct business with each other. We now expect things to happen faster, more creatively and more efficiently than ever. And those expectations of speed, collaboration, creativity and flexibility are now requirements in all of our interactions with each other, personally as well as in our business and commercial interactions.

Not surprisingly, those changes in the way we need to interact with each other have also impacted the way marketers interact within their teams and how they expect to use information in managing brands, products and services. Ironically, the traditional focus group (or dyad or triad) is ideal at delivering the environment demanded by today’s marketers: offering greater speed, creativity, flexibility and collaboration than many other marketing research techniques.

COLLABORATIVE CREATIVITY

Great marketing is the art of making connections and building relationships – between products and customers, between services and customers, and between brands and customers. In the most natural sense, focus groups deliver the setting and inquiry that leads to the creation of and the understanding of these fundamental relationships.

Focus groups maximize all available brainpower (yours, the consumer’s and the moderator’s) by bringing it together in a tightly defined opportunity for discussion and brainstorming. While you may begin the focus group process with one objective, you can allow consumer insight be developed ad hoc by following the discussion and commentary in the group. Indeed, technology in focus groups has delivered new ways to stimulate consumer thinking and to advance the discussion agenda, such as usability testing and other kinds of collaborative tools for marking up communications and brainstorming new product features.

CUSTOMER INTIMACY

There is great power in watching a focus group. You look your customer in the eye, you see their body language, you get a strong sense of their emotions. You can watch them feel, touch, and use your products. You can watch their reactions to your carefully crafted messages. And when the focus group participants speak, they are speaking directly to you.

And that communication can go well beyond the marketing team. Product research and design, engineering, operations – no matter your role in product development and delivery, you cannot attend a focus group without hearing the voice of the customer. Focus group respondents pronounce judgments that influence the path and development of the product or service and impact its eventual success. And those product evaluations are all the more effective because of the intimate and personal nature of the focus group environment.

SPEED

All marketers continually fight the time challenge: you have less time to do the work, less time to launch the product, less time to prove the product works or not. Consumers today demand ever-changing and ever-evolving products and services. Many marketers simply do not have the time necessary for quantitative research. And they certainly don’t have the time necessary for quantitative research that might or might not deliver game-changing information.

Well-designed, well-recruited and well moderated focus groups can deliver key insights in a nanosecond. As one marketing manager told us, “You walk into the groups scratching your head, and you walk out with answers and direction.”

FLEXIBILITY

An obvious advantage to focus groups is that you do not get to the end of the project before you realize you’ve been asking the wrong questions. Because focus groups can take an iterative approach, the questions asked in the beginning define the questions to be asked later on in the groups. If you do not know the answer, you may not even know to ask the question. Focus groups give you the chance to define the question while you are getting the answer.

FOCUS GROUPS: A Perennial Favorite for Marketers

The stakes are high for marketers and market researchers alike these days. With increasing pressure on market research budgets, each project is required to provide critical insight for business success. The risk of non-delivery is high with many of the techniques available to market researchers, for the new and innovative techniques as well as for the “tried and true” techniques. And that is why focus groups continue to be so popular. As reported in Quirk’s 2015 Corporate Research Report, corporate purchasing of focus group facility and moderating services has held tight for nearly a decade, including during the 2008 economic downturn. Clearly, focus groups offer marketers an enduring value that supports their decision making.

Focus groups have many of the particular characteristics that marketers are looking for: They quickly deliver immediately useful insight and information. They are compelling and personal, producing results that drive change in behavior and direction. They are flexible and facilitate collaboration and creativity. In short, focus groups have the ability to ignite business success.

So, while they are not new or different, it is no wonder that focus groups remain a perennial favorite for marketers – and will continue as such for years to come.

In qualitative research, variety is the spice of life. Moderators are particularly sensitive to the number of participants in their groups. Some firmly believe that twelve is the right number. Others are more comfortable with eight. The reasons for these preferences include:

• CONTROLLING THE GROUP. Each moderator has their own style and way of handling group interaction. Every group has their chatterboxes, the shy ones, the negative ones, and the ones who try to take over the group for their own purposes. Each moderator knows best what works for them in maintaining a productive environment in the focus group room.
• MINIMIZING “GROUP-SPEAK”. Focus groups are frequently criticized for the phenomenon known as group-speak. Basically, group-speak happens when there is a strong participant, and the other participants simply go along with what that person is saying, rather than expressing their own opinion. A good moderator overcomes group-speak by building rapport quickly, continually monitoring the room, expertly reading body language and encouraging dissident opinions. Another way to minimize group-speak is to reduce the number of participants. It’s easier to hide in a crowd!
• HEARING ALL THE VOICES. Your moderator’s goal is to hear honest and frank opinions from every group member to strengthen the insights that result. The number of participants in the group is a key part of this equation for the moderator and – again! – every moderator knows what works best for them. Forcing a moderator to include more participants than they are comfortable with so you “get your money’s worth” is only going to result in less or poorer quality information.

Often, focus groups are not the only answer to a qualitative question, although they are very popular. You need to consider your research objectives, and at the heart of it, the type of discussion and behavior you want to understand. In qualitative research, there
are other alternatives to the traditional focus group that you should keep in mind:

• IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS (IDIs): In person one-on-one interviews conducted at a focus group facility give you the chance to focus on the individual, avoiding the distractions of the other focus group members. After all, if it is just the moderator and the respondent, there is nowhere to hide! In-depth interviews are excellent for very sensitive or personal topics, as well as topics that typically involve individual assessment and decision making. Additionally, in-depth interviews are often used in business-to-business research where respondents may not be easily scheduled into a group, or there may be concerns about speaking openly in front of their competitors.
• DYADS AND TRIADS: Two or three people are recruited to participate in discussions at a focus group facility. Dyads and Triads are often used where the decision making process for a particular product or service is shared, such as in the case of spouses or parent-child decision making. Dyads and Triads avoid most of the weaknesses of focus groups while showcasing the interaction between the parties evaluating the topic or making the decision.
• MINI-GROUPS: Typically defined as groups with four to six participants, minigroups fill the gap between triads and full focus groups. Mini-groups are often used when the qualified participant is very rare or unique, and recruiting costs become prohibitive. Additionally, participants in mini-groups may feel more secure about offering different or dissenting opinions because there are fewer participants.

Your focus group facility should have a variety of settings to accommodate groups of all sizes in comfort and in an environment that promotes vigorous and creative discussion. The key question in deciding what size group to use is, “What are you trying to learn?” Consider your research objectives, think about how your target audience behaves, and then listen to your moderator, who will have the experience and expertise to guide the research design to meet your project needs.

By guest writer: Jen Ignacz
(This post originally appeared on the Topp blog)

As a UX researcher, I have found out over the years that there are far fewer qualitative researchers than quantitative researchers in the business world. This makes sense based on the ratio of qualitative and quantitative research conducted in businesses; according to ESOMAR Global Market Research Annual Reports the last several years, between 75% and 85% of global research has been quantitative year after year – but the truth isn’t always in numbers.

Reasons for Qual

At Topp we dig a bit deeper. The majority of research we conduct is qualitative, which is an important process in understanding underlying reasons, opinions, and motivations of people early in the design and development process. Qualitative research and exploration provides insights into problems and helps to catalyse design ideas or hypotheses. We see qualitative research as a compliment to the quantitative research most of our clients already have – where quantitative research is really good at answering WHAT, qualitative is best at answering WHY.

So when I came across the conference, Qual360 (run across 3 continents), just for qualitative research with applications to business, I was beyond thrilled and hopeful that I would find others like me. The purpose of the conference is to bring together qualitative researchers to discuss innovation and advancements in the qualitative research practice.

3 Themes

I observed three themes in the topics being discussed both on and off stage:

1. Qualitative research is getting a seat at the table

There’s a shift happening with what type of research senior leaders are asking for. Both the agencies and the clients attending the conference talked about how qualitative research is being sought after by high level executives to inform and inspire business strategy more than even before.

The discussions suggested this shift is happening for a few reasons:

• Senior leaders are starting to understand that quantitative research can’t answer every question. Qualitative research fills a gap that quantitative can’t and really shouldn’t try to (and vice versa).
• Significant changes to the tools and techniques in the last decade have allowed for non-researchers (ex. senior leaders) to become more deeply engaged in qualitative research as it’s happening, seeing the power of it up close and personal.
• Some significant case studies and powerful anecdotes are being tossed around the business world in recent years – others want in on this emerging technique that has shown dramatic potential.

In general, there was a buzz of excitement about being on the cusp of a major uptake of qualitative research demands from strategic leadership.

2. More tools with more impact

There’s been an explosion of digital tools focused on different types and parts of qualitative research.

There are tools

• To help recruit suitable participants better and faster than ever before
• To help researcher in the field collect and code data quickly
• That remove the need to have the researcher with the participant to collect data
• That make MROCs (Market Research Online Communities) feel more like social networks so as to get better engagement from participants
• To help moderate group or single interviews remotely
• To help you mine your existing database of reports to collect new insights

3. Research must go beyond data collection

There was a call to the industry to go beyond being order fillers of research – to innovate on the way we work. Clients dared agencies to challenge research briefs when there was clearly a better way to tackle the problem being described. Agencies dared clients to let the researchers into the post-research process of applying the results and consulting through the entire lifecycle of a product or service. There was a request for everyone having touchpoint with research to be more critical thinkers about what, why, and how we conduct research.

Fortunately, Topp is already answering this call! Since bringing Research to Topp, a guiding principle has been to ensure it’s integrated into the design process. Topp is a design agency that conducts research, not a research agency that does design. So any research we conduct has to have a clear path to impact the solution we design. There were a few tips and tricks I learned that I will be applying in the near future to ensure not only Topp designers, but also the clients we work with become more engaged with the research.

About the Author

 Jen Ignacz leads Topp’s User Experience research practice. She studied Mathematics and Psychology and discovered her love of qualitative Design Research because of a university internship program. Originally from Canada, she relocated to Sweden in 2011 for a job opportunity. Her favourite part of being a researcher is contributing to the definition and creation of meaningful products and services that people really want and need. If you want to discuss the impact of UX research in the design process, contact her at jen@topp.se

References:

ESOMAR Global Market Research 2012: https://rwconnect.esomar.org/a-world-of-difference-esomar-global-market-research-2012/

http://www.greenbookblog.org/2014/06/03/focusvision-revelation-why-its-a-new-day-for-qualitative-research/

www.qual360.com