Archive for the ‘Moderation’ Category

We'd like to welcome you to the first in what we hope to be many posts from qualitative researchers across the globe that have used our software - IdeaStream, HeadsUp and UpClose - to deliver outstanding research. We very much hope that the series stimulates debate and discussion, and we encourage you to post your comments and questions back to the author.

So without further ado, please welcome Dr Alison Lyons from Counterpoint Research. Alison recently worked with Dub to deliver an study that looked into premium lager consumption behaviours. Being Scottish, Alison assured us she knew her subject and could hold her own in any forum, so we put her to the test. Here's what she had to say....

Say hello and introduce yourself to our readers, highlighting your online and offline experience.

Hi there, I'm Alison Lyon and I've been a researcher for over 20 years. My first job was lecturing in Research Methods and Education, after which I moved into commercial market research. I kept up an interest in new methods though, and established a qualitative telephone unit at Network Research, before setting up Counterpoint Research in 1991. We were one of the very first UK agencies to start offering online methodologies, so it's really exciting to see them incorporated pretty much across the board nowadays.

From your experience, what do you glean from online qual methods (communities, bulletin boards etc) that you don’t get from more traditional f2f methods?

Time, reflection and creativity. Face to face is brilliant for living in the moment, pushing respondents into uncomfortable spaces, in-depth conversations and visceral reactions. Online is much better when you need more time to track not only how people feel 'in the moment', but also once they've thought about it, talked about it with their friends/ family, changed their minds a couple of times and (usually) landed on a compromise opinion.

It's also great when you want to encourage a lot of independent interaction between respondents. Often the most fascinating discussions start when participants ask each other questions : questions you might not ask as a moderator.

The most often-cited advantage of online methods is that they don't require participants to be physically present all at the same time, in the same location, so it makes peer to peer interaction possible between a much broader range of the population.

When you choose to use online methods, what are the most common drivers?

Most experienced researchers will look at the research problem and consider what methods will work best, in what kind of combination - nowadays that should mean considering on and offline methods.

I'd say the most common reasons I have for recommending an online approach are :

- when the service/ product/ problem to be researched is also based online

- as mentioned above - when you need to give respondents time and space to reflect, look at the issues from another angle, talk about it etc.

- when you need a balance between the individual's story and group reactions (e.g. including diaries/ blogs/ journals as well as online discussions)

- and yes, logistics (geographically spread sample, professionals/ stakeholders who can't commit to being physically available all at the same time etc)

- when the topic is extremely personal, and/ or complex - so respondents will struggle to express themselves well without feeling under pressure in a face to face environment

What do you see as the difference, if any, in the way people express themselves online versus in person?

There are lots of differences, which obviously need to be taken into consideration when designing and analysing online content - but they also vary depending on who you've invited online.

For instance, elderly investors unused to having anything like a discussion online are much more like their offline selves. They take time and spell out all their words, include all the punctuation and get annoyed when they make spelling mistakes.

Young people used to social networking tend to express themselves much more emphatically online - their emotions tend to be bigger, and expressed very quickly. But they'll also change their mind more quickly and be open to others' points of view.

An enormous benefit of online with young people is that there isn't that difficult, awkwardness you sometimes get when you ask a group of strangers to come together, open up and be frank with one another.

What tactics and tools do you use successfully to manage the rivers of data produced in online research communities?

The best online platform/ software providers allow you to organise the content as you're reading through it to respond to it - I really like features such as IdeaStream's 'rating' and annotation facilities. They work really well and are brilliant visual 'breaks' in a sea of text.

It also allows you to analyse video / photographic / graphics content alongside respondents' stories.

BUT ... the absolutely golden rule is whatever happens in your life / work / relationship / library subscription (remember those?!), stay on top of the content. If you fall behind you will not catch up.

Do you think clients are more or less excited by online research communities than researchers, and why?

I've seen an incredibly wide range of responses to the whole online research offer from both clients and researchers. But it's rare that either researchers or clients have experienced online qualitative research without being excited by it ... and those who weren't were few and judging online options as "cheap" options. Which they're not.

What do you most enjoy about running online research communities?

Like with face to face research, it's the people. I absolutely love the way research participants will share their feelings, ideas, experiences, fears, aspirations in such a generous way. The difference with online is that we give them so many ways to explore and feedback - it's not just time limited and mainly speech-based.

I also love working longer term with participants and clients - that is incredibly fulfilling.

Finally, I enjoy the buzz participants get out of working in such cool and innovative ways, and being able to see what a difference they make as their ideas are acted upon.

How do you sell the benefits of online research communities to your clients, and what do you see as the ongoing challenges of encouraging clients that it’s the right fit with their objectives?

I talk about the frankness, the creativity and the depth they'll get from their participants, and about how involved they'll be able to get.

I also talk about the beautiful transparency of online approaches, and how they'll have a much closer relationship with their customers because of online communities.

I also talk about their responsibilities - if they're asking their customers to give so much to them, they have to think carefully about what they're giving back.

What participants do you think are the best fit with online methods and why?

Do you know, I've used online approaches with the least tech-savvy people and had absolutely fantastic results. But obviously the less the participants have been online, the more work needs to go into preparing an environment where they feel comfortable.

So I'd say don't rule anyone out, and don't automatically think that young people will always be right for online on every topic.

Do you have any examples of online tasks and exercises that have worked extremely well and exceeded your expectations?

I conducted a series of online forums on the topic of egg and sperm donation for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority recently. The target audience was the general public and those with an active faith. The forums took place over 5-6 days and were absolutely fascinating. By encouraging participants to talk with friends and family about the issues being raised in the forum we were able to understand attitudes on a much deeper level.

Participants also started interacting with one another in a fascinating way, sharing some very personal, private and difficult moments with one another, and providing support and encouragement.

At the end of the project I had received a mountain of personal emails from participants, saying how amazed they were that they were able to participate so easily and how perfect an environment online had been for exploring such complex, difficult and personal issues.

Whatever the task, the best online platforms make it fun, easy and quick for respondents to feed back what they've done in a creative, interesting and thoughtful way. It has to make them look good to keep them engaged and involved.

What are you most excited about in the world of online qual research right now?

I'm really excited about how online platforms are much more flexible, and how easy it is now to combine approaches: so a few key participants in a longer term community can be asked to participate in mini-focus groups, tasks can be analysed alongside forum responses, or blogs etc. In the past researchers had to decide on either a forum, or an online texting group, or a video-conference, or a community ... nowadays we can spec what we think is appropriate for different issues and participants, and the software/ platform can cope with it.

If you’re a brand or organisation thinking of building your own online research community (MROC) as a way of regularly delivering fresh that can help you make the right decisions and helping you develop new products and services, then you’ll no doubt be pondering the role of the Community Manager.

There are of course similarities in this role to that of a Community Manager working on communities of a different purpose, ie marketing or support-led communities, but it’s the differences that are important to focus on. So we’ve taken a look at the typical activities and responsibilities you should be building into this role.

Recruitment & Growth
Unlike other community-types, the research community will have narrower membership criteria, including demographics and attitudinal. Over the course of time, members will drop out naturally and need replacing, so whether you are recruiting from a panel, existing customer data or social media channels, recruitment is one of the most important ongoing activities.

Content
Online research communities are likely to last several months or years, so retaining the interest of its members is tantamount to its success. The Community Manager will need to create ‘sticky’ content - that which is interesting, relevant, engaging and often unique.

Relationship-building
The best relationships are those that build organically over time, but deepening relationships with leading contributors - the most creative, outspoken, advocate, connected etc - pays dividends. These members can also help you with your activities. For example, make them Moderators or ask them to volunteer for various other duties which you can reward them for in a number of social and emotional ways.

Events
The best communities don’t just exist online. Punctuate your community with a range of live events, debates, presentations, parties etc, and you’ll see the participation rise and the relationships flourish.

Research
The power of your community is it’s ability to generate fresh insight and new ideas. So with the right training and tools, your Community Manager should be hunting for these golden nuggets every day. Tracking insight, trends and attitudinal changes forms part of this activity and should be supported with tools that allow them to annotate and organise the information for future reporting and dissemination

Insight engagement
One of the benefits of working with digital insight is that it can be shared quickly and easily, and can be bought to life in a multitude of ways (think data visualisation, video reports etc). Insight should be present at board level discussions, so the role of the Community Manager is also to ensure your people are engaged with it.

Moderation
This can be pre or post moderation, and focuses on making the community a safe and positive environment, weeding out the bad and highlighting the good.

Technical
Your Community Manager need not be a developer versed in the art of writing code, but it certainly helps if they can get involved in technical conversations and write specifications for new tools.

Support
Responding to questions and requests for help

Given the extent of the activities above, your Community Manager needs to be highly organised and motivated. As your community launches, they’ll spend more time on recruitment, but over time this might reduce, so they’ll need to strike a balance while sustaining a focus.

Your Community Manager needn't be a full-time position to begin with, but as your community extends, it may be worth considering the optimisation of this role to ensure your community meets it business objectives. Research communities are major commitments, so don’t take them lightly and be sure to consider all the elements, not just Community Manager, but also technology, style and content, design and investment.

Here at Dub we see video being used to capture the thoughts, ideas and emotions of consumers so much more than it was even just three years ago. This is largely due to quicker and more stable broadband and the increase in integrated webcam technology making it more accessible. But perhaps most importantly, user-behaviours have matured to the point where creating and sharing video clips is a more widely accepted method of online communication. Users of all ages are now less comfortable in putting themselves in front of a camera, where once they would shy away and leave it to only the most brave and adventurous.

Within online research communities using our IdeaStream platform, we are also seeing more researchers and Community Managers using video (webcams) to introduce tasks and exercises. It provides some fantastic results as it has the effect of leading the horse to water and encouraging your members to use video themselves as the preferred response method. But there’s more to it than that. Here’s why we think it is such a valuable technique:

• We’ve said it already, but in using video to announce your tasks and exercises, you’re more likely to see your community members use video to respond. By demonstrating to them that you are in fact human, not robot, you increase the likelihood of them sharing their own ‘human’ lives and behaviours with you.
• It imbues your tasks and exercises with more personality and character, and makes it more engaging, than, say, a task introduced by text alone
• Video methods work particularly when engaging youth audiences - one of the largest video user groups
• Video-based response allows the researcher to interpret the emotions and decode behaviour in a more potent way than, say, text base response.
• Video recording is now available on an ever-increasing number of mobile phones and smart phones, making it a more convenient for consumers to capture video when ‘out and about’. (video accounts for approximately 70% of all mobile data traffic)

Our prediction is that text-based bulletin boards, like surveys, will soon become the ‘walking dead’. They offer limited response methods and are not as native to consumers as other methods. At Dub we always strive to help researchers deliver better, more creative research. This means harnessing the ways in which consumers are interacting with their friends and family everyday and re-appropriating it.  So researchers, it’s time to stop thinking and acting like you are removed from your participants, and start using the tools and channels that they themselves are using in the most natural of ways.

If you’re interested to know how Dub can help you execute creative online research with the smarted tools, contact Stephen Cribbett at stephen@dubstudios.com

If you're an experience qualitative research moderator - online or more traditional offline methods - then we'd love to hear from you. We have a track-record in running multi-market online research studies for our clients, and work with moderators in-market. As we expand our business, we are seeking out fresh new talent, people with a passion for the new paradigm of online research, co-creation and collaborative innovation.

You'll need to speak and write English fluently - either as a first or second language - and be a proficient user of social networking platforms and social media tools. In particular, the markets we are looking to drive are South America (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina), Taiwan, China, Japan and Russia.

If you're interested in learning more, contact our CEO, Stephen Cribbett, via email at stephen@dubstudios.com

Having run online qual projects for over three years now, we’ve learned a lot along the way. Things have also changed, like consumers’ online behaviours and the ease with which they use social networks within their everyday lives.

To help keep you updated on some of the best practice principles, we’ve compiled a list of some of the most important things you should think about when designing and executing your online methodology and/or research community. Follow these, and you won’t go far wrong...

Define your online research objectives
Make sure you set the objectives of your project clearly and concisely. This will help you decipher the most appropriate methodology to employ as well as the digital toolkit that you require. A clear set of objectives will also help you manage your clients’ expectations

Close the loop between recruitment and engagement
Recruitment is fundamental to nearly all research studies, but more so with online qual given the more creative and involved nature of tasks and activities set. Make sure you set expectations at the point-of-recruitment, and consider over-recruiting to achieve the desired level of participation.

Size matters
Quite simply, too many respondents and you risk reducing the quality of output and drown in a sea of data, too few and you’ll struggle to achieve stickyness and interaction. Remember, your research will benefit from the development of relationships, so make sure you have an appropriate level of moderation and Community Management for the size of your community.

Know your tools
Before you launch your project, invest time in getting to know what the possibilities are with your chosen software platform. The more you know, the more engaging tasks and activities you can design and execute. Quite simply, time spend upfront is time lessened, and mistakes removed, as you run your community.

Customise the experience
If your project and budget allows it, then consider customising the interface design of your community platform to reflect the visual appetite of your members. An environment that appeals to twenty-something media-savvy users isn’t likely to capture the imagination of 40-something mums.

Start slow, then accelerate
Don’t panic if your project starts slowly, it’s often the norm. Warm your community up with simple tasks which get them to talk about themselves and their lives, then accelerate hard, getting into in-depth tasks and activities.

Plan incentives
Be sure to plan your incentives carefully, whether they are on a task-by-task basis, individual prizes, or based on overall participation. Reward people for both their time and effort, and thank them at every step. Social and emotional rewards are also good motivators, so let your community interact with one another to learn new things and share experiences.

Motivate and captivate
Where traditional f2f focus groups fail to share news of what has come of the information shared, online research communities provide the perfect opportunity. By giving something back to your members in the way of curated insight, you’ll witness a new excitement and vigor to their posting, and a sense that they are genuinely making a tangible difference.

Sequencing
You’re likely to asking a lot of your community, so be sure to sequence your tasks carefully, allowing them enough time to consider their response, but not too much time such that they labour. Always ask yourself ‘can the task be completed in half the time’.

Allocate time
As well as allowing your community members sufficient time to complete their tasks and activities, make sure you have allocated sufficient hours for moderation and Community Management. You can elect to log on several times a day - in a focussed manner - or once a day, depending on how you yourself work best. Give yourself enough time to observe, interact, analyse and categorise the feedback you are receiving.

Content is king
If your community is larger and more persistent, say lasting several months, then community members crave interesting and engaging content to capture their attention. Keep it fresh and stimulating, and where possible, make it exclusive.

Online/Offline
If your community is lasting for several months, why not get its members together in a room and share with them what you’ve learned, or what you’ve created as a result of their efforts. Not only does this make the initiative more tangible, it motivates participation and nurtures more powerful relationships beyond previous levels.

If you need help planning your online research community or online qual study, why not get in touch with Stephen at stephen@dubstudios.com or by calling +44 (0) 20 7247 3327

At Dub, we provide local moderators who's role it is to look after the health of your online research community. Part of their role is also to localise the study design for their particular market.

Localising the study design matters greatly, for the reasons that follow;

Appropriateness
To ensure that respondents are familiar with the terms and labels used throughout the discussion guides. Often, making a direct translation from a master document (in English) can lead to the terms having little or no meaning for participants. Fro example, we recently conducted a project about data privacy, but it was deemed that this term meant little when translated for the Asian market, so the resulting term that was adopted was Protection of Personal Information.

Formality
To attain the appropriate level of formality. In some markets around the world, formality will reduce the level of creativity in response, while other markets are more comfortable with a relaxed, casual style (such as Asian and South American markets)

Tone of Voice
When conversing with certain markets, politeness is key to ensuring participation. This is different to formality, as you can be be casual and formal, and polite at the same time.

Equally, localisation can greatly help the flow of discussion and richness of response when handled correctly. Here are some handy hints and tips to follow;

1. Ensure that questions are not ambiguous or more than two questions are combined into one, and adjust the wording of questions to ensure answers are relevant and on-topic. This helps avoid unclear or irrelevant responses.
2. Ensure sequence of questions makes it easy for respondents to follow the progressing discussion and learn more about the topic and what is expected of them in the process. This reduces the likelihood of 'don't know' answers.
3. Adjust the style of questions to local communication preferences. For example, Japanese respondents value harmony and dislike voicing a different opinion, and are less used to analytical thinking and open debate.