Dear Dr. Pete,

obviously i try to keep up with the times by adjusting myquestionnaires to take account of changing technologies andpractices. i just added questions about smartphone ownership,because i believe that is the new thing, and i am amazed to findthat smartphone owners are less likely to be using the internet.i don’t get it – i thought they would be early adopters. What’sgoing on?

lionel Frobenius

Dear Lionel,

Firstly, congratulations on keeping up with the times. i think yourproblem is in not keeping up with semantics. We (researchers) areoften castigated for our use of language: we are pedantic, we over-define and we write in a way we would never speak. it is onlyresearchers who use the term “surf the internet,” for example, orwho lump YouTube and Facebook together under the banner of“using social media.” users out there, however, are “Facebooking”or “going on” YouTube. We get the overall idea; we just use thewrong verb. and the same is true for your smartphone users.“How did you do the price comparison?” is answered, “i did it onmy phone.” You need to listen to real conversations, even listen toyourself– it will help!

Dear Dr. Pete,

are you always right?John Wade

Dear John,

no, occasionally i am wrong. a few years ago, i wrote about aconfident projection from 2007 that said that, by 2011, 80% ofinternet users would have a ‘second life.’ i said then that i’d waituntil 2011 to write something sniffy about future gazing–and thenpromptly forgot. Well, Second life had (on ‘good authority’) about600,000 active users in 2013. So when thinking about the future,let’s be careful out there–and put our confident predictions wellout past our retirement age.

Send your questions to Dr. Pete care of angela@esomar.org

Dr. Pete is Pete Cape, global knowledge director at SSI

RW Connect is ESOMAR’s online magazine, giving you the latest in marketresearch techniques, case studies, trends and opinions from the leading voicesdriving the industry.

rwconnect.esomar.org

Steve August is founder and CEO of Revelation in the uSA

Big Data and the Future ofQualitative Research

in the new world of big data, some might question whetherqualitative research is still necessary. indeed, qualitativeresearch has always been a small part of the market researchindustry compared to quantitative research. But qualitative still

has a place in the research toolkit. in addition to its stand-alonerole of generating deep consumer insight, qualitative researchhas always fulfilled an additional and fundamental role– that ofdelivering the “why” behind quantitative research and datatrends. and ultimately, understanding why something ishappening is the key to knowing what to do about it.

People are more than a collection of data points. There isirrefutable power in seeing customers’ faces and hearing theirstories to illuminate the “why” behind the patterns in data andgiving companies insight on how to move forward. Behind everydata point is a human story that holds the key to thatunderstanding. Qualitative brings the human element to a data-driven world.

But that is not to say that qualitative research doesn’t have itsown ‘big data’ challenges. one of the great things about mobileand online research is their ability to capture a large amount ofexpression from engaged participants very quickly. However, thisalso represents a challenge for analysis. For example, in a recentproject, 70 participants produced 400 pages of text, over 1,100images and many hours of video in just five days of activities.

While the size of all this data can be measured in meregigabytes (vs. exabytes), to a qualitative researcher, that is a hugemountain of in-depth information–call it “little big data.”

Faced with little big data, qualitative researchers haveunderstandably looked to technology for help, especially in thecase of text analytics. However, i have talked to researchers whohave utilised different text analytics tools, some integrated intoqualitative analysis packages, some fully dedicated to textanalysis. Quite a few of the researchers i have spoken toregarding this approach reported to be less than satisfied …

To find out more about big data and the future of qualitativeresearch, read the full article on RW Connect.

Dr. PeteTHE WALk-in CLiniC FOR RESEARCH AiLmEnTS

RW COnnECT

83RESEARCH WORLD | September 2014

84 RESEARCH WORLD | September 2014

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