I’m going to tell you story. It’s about qualitative research, but it might not seem like that immediately, so bear with me. It’s a story about my friends Betsy and Missy. I’ve known them both for over 25 years. But they’ve known each other a lot longer. Because, at the start of their first day of kindergarten – right after Betsy sat down at her desk – Missy, who was a perfect stranger, turned around and asked Betsy, “can we be friends?” Betsy said, “yes.” And, all these years later, they’re still close friends.
Why am I telling this story, aside from the desire to tug at your heartstrings? Because it illustrates the boundless potential of each moment we experience. Who would have expected a simple question posed by one kindergartner to another would result in a decades-long, thick-and-thin friendship?
Qualitative research differs fundamentally from any other kind of research (quant, syndicated, big data analysis, etc.) in that it is a string of moments we experience directly and personally; it is really just a fancy term for conversation. Think about your own experiences; just about everybody can recall life-changing conversations they’ve had at various points in their lives. Conversation is – by its nature – unstructured and unpredictable. While you might know where a conversation will begin, you have no idea where it’s going to end up.
And so, every moment in qualitative research carries unlimited promise. Every instant has the potential to create something game-changing. Whether it’s a participant describing her relationship to a brand in a way no member of the brand team has ever considered, or an anecdote related by a shopper that finally makes it clear why shelf movement has dropped so sharply in the past six months, conversation leads to unexpected places that reveal things that are entirely new.
This means, that if we design with this characteristic of unlimited possibility in mind, any qualitative study can reveal unexpected, extraordinary insights. But this doesn’t happen by itself.
So, when designing qualitative, it’s important to make sure that your design allows for this possibility. Here are 6 principles and techniques that can increase the chance of having one of these moments:
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Stay away from a box-checking mindset. Qualitative research isn’t about methodically working your way through a list of discussion topics and making sure you ask all the predetermined questions. It’s about feeling your way through a dark, unfamiliar landscape and discovering what’s there.
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Ask open ended questions. Closed ended questions are for quant. Or, if you’re trying to establish some sort of objective baseline, ask closed ended questions as part of the homework, in the waiting room, or put them in your screener.
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Get diversity in your participants. If your participants are recruited to be alike, they’re probably going to give you a limited range of points of view. So diversity is a virtue: economic, ethnic, attitudinal, demographic, experiential, the list goes on and on.
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Get diversity in your data. In addition to conversation, projective, creative and story collection techniques can provide unexpected insights. And, if you’re looking to push the envelope a bit more, consider tools like biometrics and textual analysis. I also like to diversify my data by mixing interaction methods; group discussions, IDIs, online bulletin boards, intercept interviews and social media listening can all peacefully coexist in one study.
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Allow time for tangents and discussion of new issues. If you set too many guardrails around the course of discussion and don’t permit participants to talk about what they want to talk about, you’ll never wind up someplace new. So let people ramble a bit.
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Prepare for unexpected insights to be uncovered after the fact. Whether you’re observing or moderating research, you don’t always realize in the moment that something important just happened. That’s one reason to make sure the research is fully documented and recorded. Transcripts and good-quality videography can go a long way towards ensuring your post-analysis is as successful as it could be. And relying on a single person to analyze the findings and create the final deliverable may not be the best idea. Analysis and reporting – at its best – is a team sport. The more eyes, ears and brains you have reviewing the data, the better the chance that somebody will spot something remarkable.