The Game-Changing Nature of Qualitative Research
Surveys and big data are great. And if you have really smart survey designers creating questions, and excellent analysts interpreting the data, they can be incredibly compelling, leading to transformative change for business.
But often, survey results fall just a little short of a true understanding of people, and context and depth is needed to derive meaningful insights.
Enter qualitative research, which should be a part of every insights program’s toolkit.
As we often do in qual, let’s tackle the question “why”?
Firstly, because there are people like me out there: often when I read about survey results, I can poke far too many holes in it. “But what is the context of that statement?” “People don’t like it, but why? What do they prefer?” — and so on and so forth. Often there haven’t been enough, or the right kind of questions or approach to satisfy the range of questions that need to be answered to understand the full picture.
Conversely, if there is enough information upfront, you can ask the right kind of questions that ensure a full understanding — and avoid people like me asking “but what about…?”
Sometimes there is enough information to effectively design a survey, and other times there isn’t. The role for Qual research here is pretty clear: update the information, insights, hypotheses and even the language used to talk about the category, so the survey designers have solid information with which to work.
Second, and I hinted at this above: language. How many times have you yourself taken a survey that uses awkward or obsolete verbiage, marketing lingo, or obvious insider language that regular old consumers don’t use? I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been chatting with a friend and asked them to indicate the extent to which they agree or disagree with my statement. If a friend ever does that to me, I guarantee there will be a long pause, during which I will be distracted from the actual question trying to figure that one out.
And while we consumers are certainly more marketing-savvy than ever, I still want to feel like I’m answering questions posed by an actual human being, and want to feel my answers will help actual people — not some faceless corporation.
How do we get the right language? We listen to how people talk about the category. Social listening can help, sure — but it really only scrapes the surface, and we need to follow the conversation farther to understand comprehensively. Listening to consumers talk about the category, topic, product, etc. — can add immediate, contextual understanding that informs the words we use, and the way we use them in surveys.
Thirdly, and maybe most importantly, we humans are complex, and getting even more complex. Deciphering meaning from what we say or do is tricky. It requires asking a lot of questions, asking them in different ways, and cross-checking to ensure you truly understand.
Quallies love laddering — for good reason. Asking “why?” and then “why?” again and again and again can illuminate an otherwise murky topic. And you simply don’t have that chance unless talking live, in real time, human-to-human.
And explaining the meaning in people’s lives can be even tricker. But, nothing sells an idea like a story told by the people that live it. Ver batims and video snippets are powerful deliverables because they generate empathy, and empathy inspires.
In economically tenuous times, the decisions leaders make need to be predicated on the whole person — not just what people say they do, but why they do it, what motivates them and keeps them awake at night, and how they envision their ideal lives. This is the game-changing nature of qual.
Postnote: Ironically, I wrote this blog post in Q422 on the eve before I was told my research agency had decided to double-down on survey research and discontinue the qual practice. So apparently, my argument doesn't land with everyone…and I’d love to hear the range of opinions about this topic — so please, hit me up if you have another perspective.
