Introduction to online qualitative research methods

INTRODUCTION TO ONLINE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES –
FOCUS ON QUALITATIVE

Robert Pinter
Corvinus University, Department of Information and Comm.
Ipsos Interactive Services, Client Service Director

02 October 2012, Budapest Business School

ONLINE RESEARCH – TOPICS FOR TODAY
 Introduction: research of online phenomena and
online research methodologies
 Qualitative online research
 Online focus groups
 Research forums / blogs
 Research with online communities (MROC)
 Netnography – social media research, social listening

 (Never)ending: future of online research

INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS INTERNET
(OR ONLINE) RESEARCH?

INTRO
 How does internet change internet research?

1. Internet changes the business environment, it
plays more and more important role in clients’
life, hence it becomes in itself a research topic.

2. But research methodologies also change, internet
becomes a research tool (or more exactly: many
tools) I AM GOING TO SPEAK ABOUT THIS

TYPES OF ONLINE RESEARCH METHODS

 Online qualitative: asking questions (active
methods) or observation (passive merhods)
 Questionnaire based (quantitative)

 Software based measurement, data collection (e.g.
internet audience measurement)
I WON’T SPEAK ABOUT THESE

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH ONLINE?
IS IT POSSIBLE?!

MAIN ONLINE QUAL METHODS
 Possible classifications:
 synchronous or asynchronous
 active or passive

 Methods
 Online focus group / in-depth interview (active,
synchronous)
 Online research forums / blogs (active, asynchronous)
 Market research online communities (both active or
passive / both synchronous or asynchronous
 Netnography (passive, asynchronous)

 Let’s have a look first on online focus groups!

WHY/WHEN TO DO ONLINE FOCUS GROUP
INTERVIEWS (FGI): BENEFITS OF ONLINE FGI
Benefit What does it mean?

Less time Effective recruitment, shorter field time, full script
of FGI from software right at closing interview

Less cost Recruitment is less costly and project
management as well

One way mirror Online FGI can apply a virtual one way mirror,
clients may watch discussion (but not interact)

Honesty and safety Participants can’t see each other, making good
impressions is less seducing, they feel the
situation more comfortable and secure
Valuable results Participants are more open to sensitive topics,
they think over reactions
9
Hard to reach respondents Easier to involve hard to reach respondents, no
geographical limits, less time consuming for
participants

POSSIBLE TOPICS FOR FGIS

Evaluation of an existing
web service (appearance,
content, functions,
possible future plans);
Evaluation of marketing
and promotional materials
at their different stages of
production;
Investigation of already
existing or new products of
a market;
Sensitive or highly
personal topics: erotics,
drugs, healthcare, religion,
moral issues, stereotypes,
etc.

10

STAGES OF A FGI PROJECT 1: PREPARATION
 Interaction with end client, preparing of brief (aim of
research, definition of target group, deadlines, costs
etc.)
 Schedule of research project (milestones, key
persons, deadlines)
 FGI interview guideline (draft and final versions)

 Pilot site for project, testing the environment (login)

11

STAGES OF A FGI PROJECT 2: RECRUITMENT
 Refinement of definition of research target group
 Preparation of recruitment materials

 Recruitment via phone and / or e-mail / and or / f2f

 Over sampling the target group (based on past
experiences)

12

STAGES OF A FGI PROJECT 3: FIELDWORK
 Invitation materials sent to respondents
 Respondents login to the live research environment

 Warm-up: few introductory questions

 Questions / tasks from approved guideline

 Discussion by participant lead by moderator

 Possible further questions from end clients (via
moderator only)

13

STAGES OF A FGI PROJECT: RESULTS
 Transcript of full FGI by software (automatically
ready at closing of interview)
 Quantitative & qualitative analysis of responses

 Preparation of research results (mainly
presentation)

14

LET’S SEE IT IN ACTION!

Screenshots from an online FGI
software in action:
• login
• discussion
• using pictures
• virtual room for clients
• instructions at click
•clients interaction (to each other
and to moderator)
• pop-up messaging to all

15

17
Discussion in FGI software:
participants may see
posts of each other
and questions by
moderator.
They can write
to each other
like in chatting.

18
Moderator may put in
(motion) picture
as well.

19
Clients may speak with each other
in a separate window (virtual room, called Observers)

20
Clients may ask questions
from moderator as well

21
Clients can’t interact with
participants of research

Help menu is at one click

22

Pop-up message may be sent
to everyone at once

23

OUTPUT: LOG FILE

24
System prepares
automatically logs
of all window

ONLINE FGI: SUMMARY
 Online FGI is practically joint chatting with recruited
members based on a guideline (active, synchronous
method)
 Nearly completely different group dynamics
 Not so deep involvement, more active discussion,
plenty of shorter posts / comments
 Avoiding research topics which need deeper
involvement and longer reactions
 No geographical limits in participation
 Intimacy is less problematic
 Online research topics are good choices
 This is not widespread like offline, traditional focus
groups

RESEARCH FORUMS/BLOGS

 Online research forum / blog is practically joint
participation in a forum / blog with recruited
members
 Based on discussion on pre-defined questions
(active but asynchronous method)
 Not widespread globally

USING BLOGS / FORUMS FOR RESEARCH
PURPOSES
 Participants are recruited from target group(s) defined
by end client
 Participants have access to research blog / forum
 Blog or forum is restricted area for participants (need
to login)
 Respondents need to prepare post /comments in
given topics and time period, moderated by
researchers
 After closing fieldwork researcher prepares analysis

 Analysing traditional blogposts / forum activities is part
of netnography

EXAMPLE FOR RESEARCH FORUM
 Discussion between recruited
members in a restricted area in
given topics & certain time
period

30

RESEARCH WITH ONLINE COMMUNITIES

MARKET RESEARCH ONLINE COMMUNITIES
(MROC)
 Research communities: a kind of online research
panels, which are communities as well, users may
interact with each other
 This is suitable for both online quantitative and
qualitative research
 Short surveys (or votes) with many participants

 Moderated conversations (real time or
asynchronous)
 Other activities, e.g. posting
pictures, videos, comments etc.

MROC – DIFFERENCES FROM ONLINE PANELS

 Similar to online research access panels
 But there are important differences:
 Special recruitment aspects / groups
 Usually much smaller panel size
 Unique registration form
 Not only questionnaire based research projects, but
moderated discussions (online qual) as well
 Community: members may interact with each other
 It demands high involvement from both researcher and
end client (and participants) – huge workload (impact on
costs)
 Can be used for: getting know target group more deeply,
insight generation, testing company materials (e.g.
concepts, ads, products)…

HOW DOES AN MROC PLATFORM LOOK LIKE?

An example for an MROC platform in action

SUMMARY

 MROCs are good choice for ongoing research
activities
 Suitable for both online qual / quant

 It can be both active and passive, synchronous and
asynchronous
 MROC is a real mix of all online research methods

 It means usually a huge workload

NETNOGRAPHY: WHAT IS IT?
 Observation of any kind of online discussions of
users, any user generated content
 It is called also social media research or social
listening

HOW DOES NETNOGRAPHY WORK?
• Researchers use a social media mining tool to bring us the cleanest data.
This tool crawls the web every day and captures new content

Social Networks

• Recurring phrases, topics & people are identified using Natural Language
Processing
• The Sentiment Classifier works out if the tone of the mentions are good,
neutral or bad
• Researchers then read, clean and analyze the content to provide actionable
insight

OUTPUT EXAMPLE: CUSTOM DASHBOARD FOR
CLIENTS (LIVE REPORT)

NETNOGRAPHY
 Collecting, categorizing and analysing of user
generated content on internet (e.g. blog posts,
comments, social media activities)
 Passive method: observation and not asking
questions
 Hence content may not reply to our exact questions

 Question: who are represented by this data?

 Not really quantifiable results (not percents, but
opinions, attitudes)
 Researcher must follow strict ethical and legal rules
(e.g. anonymous participants, walled gardens etc.)

SUMMARY

 Thanks to internet researchers may conduct not
only active, but passive research (observation
based) as well.
 Internet is a huge data base (a goldmine) for
researchers: users tell everything by themselves for
free, it only needs to be collected and analyzed
 But it has its limitations: representativity,
quantifiability, not replying to questions, limited
coverage (walled gardens), strict rules

MARKET RESEARCH (METHOD) IS IN CONSTANT
CHANGE: INNOVATION IS ON ITS WAY
 Gartner MR
„hype-curve”

 Plenty of
promising new
methodologies

 Which one of
them will be
succesful and
reach stage of
Productivity?

 Productive,
widespread
methods
nowadays: CATI,
CAPI, CAWI and
focus groups

FURTHER READING

Ray Poynter (2010): The
Handbook of Online and
Social Media Research.
John Wiley and Sons.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!

Robert Pinter
Corvinus University
Department of Information and
Communication

Ipsos Interactive Services
Client Service Director

robert.pinter@uni-corvinus.hu
http://facebook.com/probesz
twitter: @probesz
skype: probesz

Introduction to online qualitative research methods

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