The Future Place Blog

Using Participant Blogs in Market Research

As part of the book I am looking at how market researchers have used blogs as research tools, specifically where they have recruited respondents and enabled them to create a blog as part of a research topic.

Adding together my experience, colleagues’ experiences, and conference papers my views are that blog projects tend to have the following in common:

• Each participant is given their own blog to maintain.
• Usually qualitative. The participants may be asked to fill in a survey as part of the exercise, but this tends to be for background and segmentation purposes.
• The participants recruited in the same sorts of ways that are used for other qualitative projects and for online research communities.
• If incentives are used they tend to be quite high (compared with quantitative and online research communities).
• Tend to last more than three days, but less than three months.
• The number of participants tends to be modest, compared with quantitative studies and online research communities. Typically ranging from about ten to about 60.

What is your experience? Do you often run them longer/shorter? With fewer or more participants?
In terms of naming the people doing the blogging, what other names are you using? (I have heard collaborators, and academics sometimes say subjects).

Whys has online qual not taken off?

OK, I accept that there is lots of online qual in absolute terms! But, if we look back to 1999, online quant was about 2% of global quant revenues, now, according to the latest ESOMAR Global Report, online quant is the single largest modality by revenue for quant research.

By contrast, online qualitative has a longer history than online quant, but it is stil just a few percent of all qual.

My feeling is that online qual has not offered the same cost savings as quant (online quant is about one-third the cost of face-to-face quant). Also, although online quant has caused compromises to be made on quality (for example the acceptance of using panels), I think that mostly the compromises have been accepted or ignored.

By contrast, I think that many vendors and buyers of qualitative have a view that the quality compromise is much bigger with online qual.

What do you think about how we gor to where we are right now?

My take on qual versus quant

This post started life as part of a comment I added to a post by Surinder on his Research Talk site, but has now taken a life of its own!

The growth of interest in online research communities, buzz and blog mining, Twitter, e-ethnography, and semiotics has re-opened the discussion about what is qual and what is quant. In particular people have been asking questions along the line “If I have 200,000 posts, is the analysis of that qual or quant?”

My current, informal, definition of qual and quant is roughly:

a) If we look at an analysis process that if two trained practitioners use the same technique on the same data, with the same tools and with the same assumptions SHOULD produce the same answers, then it is quant - i.e. it derives its value entirely from the method and the data

b) If a) is not true, but the analysis is based on a proper methodology and approach, it is qual – i.e. the results are based on the method, the data and the interpretation of the researcher

c) if neither a) nor b) are true then the analysis is simply meta physics and should be put to one side.

Using the definitions above, where does that place using a tool like Tangerine or Leximancer to analyse very large amounts of text? My feeling is that they are unambiguously qualitative at the moment. In order for these tools to be useful, judgements have to be made about how text is grouped and coded. When those decisions are not trivial they rely on the users own sense of narrative and their social constructs.

What are the key issues about Web survey systems?

As part of the book I am writing for Wiley, a handbook of online and social media research I have been working this week on the systems that companies use to conduct online surveys, i.e. Web surveys.

I would really appreciate hearing people’s thoughts on the structure I am thinking about using.

The first level of the chapter looks at the categories that anybody choosing a an approach towards a web survey system should consider. The headings at this level are:

1. Whether to have a system  - or just buy completed surveys from third party suppliers
2. Buying or developing a system
3. Software or SaaS (Software as a Service)
4. Cost
5. System features
6. Capacity

The ‘System features’ category clearly needs subdividing and my thoughts at the moment are the following subdivisions:

1. Questionnaire creation tools
2. Questionnaire testing facilities
3. Project management and monitoring
4. Mulitmedia options
5. Advanced graphical interface
6. Panel management
7. Project reporting
8. Analysis options
9. International options
10. Mobile research
11. Hybrid survey options
12. Security options
13. Advanced marketing science modules
14. Programmable script or language

I would appreciate any suggestions or thoughts. Do you think I have missed an important category? Have I missed an important subdivision of Systems features?

Tweet whilst you present!

Here is a link to a story about a really interesting new app that takes the Tweetference concept one step further, giving presenters the chance to auto-tweet whilst they present!

The method is that you download the app and then embed tweets on the notes part of the page. As you present that page the tweet gets sent.

Lot's of potenital for bother, but sounds interesting!

Thanks to Nigel Legg for the tip.

Shame on you Google, you either oppose racism or support it

The BBC (and many others) are reporting that Google has refused to remove a shockingly racist picture of Michelle Obama. They are not even prepared to manually alter their search algorithm to ensure that anybody searching for an image of Michelle Obama is not presented with this image as the top hit.

Google seem to believe they are being neutral. They need to understand that there are areas where there is no such thing as a neutral position. Google have to decide if they want to oppose racism or promote it. At the moment they are the method that this image is being delivered into homes, schools, and workplaces around the world.

I quickly checked Yahoo! and the offending picture did not appear on the first page. So, I will make an effort to use and recommend Yahoo!.

When a Tweetference goes wrong

This post by Danah Boyd is a painfully honest story of how a Tweetference turned into a virtual mugging of a speaker.

I will not tell too much of the story, because I cannot do Danah's story justice, and I strongly recommend you read her post.

Danah was a speaker at the Web2.0 Expo. She was not told in advance that there was going to be a screen visible to the audience showing the tweets that people were making whilst she was speaking, and which she could not see. She got off to a poor start and the crowd starting abusing her on the Tweet Wall, and started laughing at their own comments. The level of abuse got worse and worse as the audience turned into the same sort of mob who get involved in happy slapping.

The big lessons here. I feel. is that Twitter Walls should not be visible to an audience during a presentation. The alternative is to present a pre-recorded presentation and let the presenter make their case during the session - remember Danah could not see the Twitter Wall, nor answer of the jibes.

The people who behaved so badly really ought to take a long look at themselves.

Many thanks to Alison for the tip

Should we ban virtual war crimes?

The BBC have an interesting story about a review of video games. The review looked at whether video games allowed players to commit acts that in the real world would count as war crimes.

Evidently the games varied from ones that did have penalties for players who needlessly killed civilians, through to games that allowed a wide range of war crimes.

The issue for policy makers, legislators, and games designers is what to do with these findings. There is no evidence that soldiers who play games break more laws than those who do not. However, my worry is that this aspect of gaming could affect the public's perception of what is right and wrong in warfare.

I think it would be great if games operated to guidance that required feedback to be given to players when they commit acts that would break international laws. However, I would probably limit this idea to games involving humans, I think the idea of trying to get your head around war crimes and Orcs or dragons might be a tad tricky.

Transparency, yes please

The fact I have some reservations about the Federation for Transparency in Offshoring (because it does not also tackle outsourcing and because it allows a logo saying 100% no offshoring, which I think panders to protectionism), should not lead people to think that I am against transparency.

My feeling is that the following should all be declared as early as possible, usually in the proposal

1. Any outsourcing to third-parties, including servers, data collection systems, consultants, panels, DP, marketing sciences.
2. Any risks that are beyond what might normally be expected. So, if you know that you might not be trading in a month's time you should declare this.
3. Risk factors that are normal, but the client may not have thought of, for example sampling error, measurement errors etc
4. Anything the client might be interested in.

I am not 100% sure where I stand on offshoring of some services within a multinational company. For example

Let's imagine a multinational research company IP.RI.GF.MB with its marketing sciences basing in Berlin, its servers in Paris, its accountants in London, and its call centre in Rome.

If the project is going to sold and conducted in Spain, then I think it is essential that client is told that the call centre is based in Rome (even if it only uses native Spanish speakers).

I am not sure that it is necessary to say that the servers are in Paris or that the marketing scientists are in Berlin (provided that personally identifiable information if not being moved across national borders).

I don't feel it is important to say that the accounting function has been offshored to London. However, I can think of at least one occasion when a client had not told me they had outsourced their accounting to their Paris office, instead of the UK, which resulted in a three month delay in being paid, so perhaps I should change my mind.

But, to make it very, very clear I think transparency is good.

But, I also think protectionism is, in most cases, is bad.

The obligation to trade freely within the EU is good. The EU's protectionist measures against other countries, especially the third world is bad.

Finding Tweetferences?

There seems to be lots of interest in the developing phenomenon of Tweetferences (a conference enhanced and broadened via Twitter).

Does anybody have any tips for finding out about new events, for example a list of event hashtags?

Similarly, does anybody have any recommendation for approaches or apps?