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The Essential Guided Tour to the Universe of

Online Qualitative Research

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Listening Social Media

Ethnography lite

BBFG

OFG

Co-creation etc

Replicating offline tasks

E- ethnography

Multi- method Research

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Designing Interplanetary Craft

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Multi-method research

Knowledge, rationalisations, thinking patterns,

Habits, perceptions, associations, intuitive knowledge

Emotions, conscious and out of awareness

Social group behaviour, conformity, influence, values

Cultural ‘rules’, myths and codes, accepted practices

If you only do one type of research you will only explore one facet. Narrow views of the world are often misleading.

Encourages thinking outside the box of any one theory

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Main categories of methodsFace to face interviews

Variations on groups and depths Pre and post tasking

Personal connection & flexibility

Observation Direct, participant/researcher/

Client, filming

‘Truth serum’ – people not aware of own behaviour

Online Listening, Netnography, OFGs, BBFGs MROCs Co-creation/Crowdsourcing

Beyond limits of space and time, ‘being there’, qualntitative

Consultation Workshops, panels, citizens juries, consumer consultants, forums etc

Social benefits for decision making

Technology Eyetracking, biometrics, neural imaging

Outside conscious control

Cultural analysis Semiotics, discourse analysis etc Outside personal awareness

Case studies Longitudinal Continuity

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On AND off-line

Offline and online deserve to be considered as complementary methodological approaches Different contextExaggerate distance between confessional style self reporting and observation.Most research is artificial – increasingly online behaviour isn’t – its naturalisticNot much research is real time – the mobile phone is a game changerCalibration between on and offline needed for quantitative surveys

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Choosing

Immediate, now

Longitudinal

Relationship

TIME

Free, cheap InvestmentMONEY

Dispersed

Hard to contact

Unknown

Contactable

Known

TrackedSAMPLE

Importance to participant / spontaneously expressed

Importance to client / guided expression

AGENDA/ Spontaneity

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Fusion solutions

Listening to identify issues

BBFG, small or large community – continual evolution

OFGs to explore

F2F deeper

Mobile in the

moment Mark up

votecreate

Listening to follow reaction

vlogs

E-ethnography to find opinion leaders

Don’t forget quant data

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Informed Eclecticism

• Use a range of methods on any project to

get multiple perspectives.

• ‘Triangulation’ increases validity

• You get more than the sum of the parts

Buzz, trending

Behaviour, tell and show you

Attitudes and emotions

Creative development

Social & cultural factors

Popularity and predictions

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Triangulation

Points in space relative to one another

How different methods corroborate one

another AND elaborate, challenge,

generate new hypotheses

Different types of data

More dynamic and insightful

Increases validity

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Final Exercise

Discuss how you would apply it to a brief

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Sponsorship Stars

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Drinks at the End of the Universe!