Qualitative research is good for a lot of things. But its ability to test and refine language makes it indispensable.
An anecdote: in my previous life in brand management, we fielded a large, expensive segmentation study of the margarine category. the results were surprising. Not only were several of the findings counterintuitive, but they were inconsistent with previous research.
We were skeptical, but also excited: perhaps we had identified new insights. So, we did what you do when quantitative research results are unexpected: we conducted qualitative research.
What we learned was painful. The results were surprising because we had used the wrong terminology. Key terms in the questionnaire didn’t mean to consumers what they meant to us. ‘Spreadability’ and ‘baking performance,’ seemed obvious to the people who designed the study. But the respondents interpreted them differently.
In the end, after much handwringing, we were forced to admit that the entire study was useless. This was an expensive, embarrassing and completely preventable disaster.
How could we have avoided this catastrophe? By testing our terminology qualitatively before fielding the quantitative study. There’s no better way to make sure you’re using the right language than exploring it with the people you want to understand.
Whether it’s the language in your questions, product concepts or attribute lists, all these can be tested Whenever we communicate with consumers, there’s always a risk that the words we use will mean something different to them than they mean to us.
And I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this needs to be done by humans. It requires careful, detailed exploration of text, often word-by-word, along with the ability to probe when things aren’t clear. Here are a few techniques I use to see if words are correct:
Ask participants to identify the most important words or phrases in the passage. The language you think is doing the heavy lifting might not be what stands out to the reader.
Point out what you believe to be key words or phrases and see if the participant agrees. Sometimes, asking ‘is this an important word?’ can be revealing.
Once you’ve identified key terms, ask participants to define them in their own words. Know in advance how the writer intended terms to be understood. Then see how closely the participant’s definition matches the intended meaning.
Ask participants to restate key passages in their own words. Then compare their version with the original and see which they prefer, what they would change and why.
This can be tedious, but, it’s worth the effort. It forces you to slow down and focus on details. Not only will it help ensure that your research yields reliable results, but you’ll learn about how your consumers think about and describe your product, brand and category.
A final point: testing words is necessary because we all get tied up in jargon. The gap between the technical language those steeped in a specific area use and the colloquial language used by the general population is where miscommunications happen. Qualitative research is how you bridge that gap.
Any word can be misunderstood.