There’s never enough money for research.  One way to keep reduce costs is to conduct qualitative research online. Many of the steps used in conducting offline qualitative research apply equally  to the virtual world.

5 Tips for Your Online Research

1. Planning matters.  Developing an effective project management plan, coordinating the plan internally and communicating the plan are still must dos. Assign a team.  Most qualitative research studies have a single point-person and a dedicated team  Hold a kick off meeting with all team members.
2. Employ the scientific method.  Whether online or not, research requires setting objectives, crafting a hypothesis, asking questions, and understanding sampling.  You still need to know your audience, their habits, behaviors, availability, and so on.
3. Design your approach. Decide whether you are going to cover more range but stay shallow or cover less area but go deeper.  Determining what questions need to be answered, by whom, are important considerations for designing your approach. Research is usually undertaken to confirm a hypothesis or validate a decision that has already been made. But if a survey only offers a universe of plausible response options, then respondent data will only include plausible response selections, thereby increasing measurement error and failing to reveal respondents’ ignorance on the subject. A few well-placed red herrings or an occasional open-ended question, allow the analyst to look for inconsistencies which may suggest taking a closer look at the respondent.
4. Sample wisely:  Be diligent about ensuring the quality of the online sample for B2B research.  In many ways B2B isa different animal from consumer research: the size of the universe may or may not be measurable; the universe may be quite small (e.g., in managed care research); fielding costs are considerably higher; and study participants must be either in positions of influence (such as buying or influencing insurance coverage decisions) and/or in the position of knowledge (e.g., specific training or expertise enabling them to evaluate the merits of new products or technologies).  If you plan to use an online panel supplier, be sure to screen respondents (consider including some red-herring questions) more rigorously than what a typical screening questionnaire will do. Evaluate open-ended responses and look at response consistency.
5. Engage study participants.  Engaging respondents online can be a challenge.  Connecting with online respondents with direct questions, but no strategy, will get you direct answers, nothing more. For online research, it is important to leverage experienced, well-trained moderators who know how to build rapport, utilize projective techniques, ground respondents in their experiences, and gauge personality types.  Personalizing each conversation is also important for engaging study participants.

Online Communities and Panels for Market and Customer Research

Online communities and panels provide a valuable vehicle for collecting data. They can serve as powerful platforms for engaging customers in extended conversations. Researchers have found a very high degree of similarity between online community results and online panel results. Online communities and online panels provide equivalent business insights, and would produce the same business decisions. In sample comparisons, online communities generate the same conclusions as online access panels. Online community members may express their opinions more frequently, more avidly and more vividly, but the opinions they express don’t differ significantly from their more reserved counterparts.

Keep in mind that like online panels, membership in an online community is not random.  Participants have chosen to join, and have chosen to stay involved. The implications are that you should expect some characteristic differences from the general population. Studies have found that unless these differences between online community and panel members and the general population are correlated with responses to the questions of interest, they will not impact results. In such cases, conclusions can be considered projectable to the general population.

Purchase Your Assessment

In general, online communities and panels can and do provide high-quality data. In fact, some studies found that respondents from online communities are consistently more attentive than industry standards, as measured by occurrences of straightlining and looking at consistency with data-quality traps. On average, of those who qualify for a study, 92% complete it. If we include those who are terminated because they fail to qualify, the completion rate rises to 97%.

Other communities, which structure incentives to promote participation over the life of the community, can be expected to have even higher response rates, completion rates and retention rates. Even without this incentive, you should be confident in proceeding with data analysis without significant concerns about data quality. Researchers have found that customization, visual appeal and ease of use positively affect online community and panel participation.

Employ Solid Research Techniques

Online research is becoming increasingly popular among marketers. Many of the requirements for online research are the same as for traditional research – planning, using a scientific method, survey design, sampling, and engaging participants. But there are some important differences to take into consideration in order to obtain reliable, valuable information.

It’s important to that the data from your research is reliable and actionable.  If research is new to you, seek out expert help. Learn how our customers leverage our expertise.

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