The secrets of conducting successful Ethnography research online

A
Presenta*on
from
the
NewMR
Ethnography
&

Market
Research
Event
-‐
May
25,
2011

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The
Secrets
of
How
to
Gather

Ethnographic
Data
from
Online
Surveys

Jon
Puleston,
GMI

WWW.GMI-MR.COM | ONLINE ETHNOGRAPHY | 2
Speaker Jon Puleston, GMI Interactive, UK
NewMR Ethnography, May 25, 2011
Ethnographic
The secrets of how to gather
Tips and hints for gathering
ethnographic style data from online
surveys
data from online surveys

Background
•  GMI interactive team specialise in the design &
development of interactive surveys for clients
around the world
•  Also conducted extensive research into how to
stimulate respondents to give more effective
feedback by making surveys more engaging
»  Conducted over 100 research experiments exploring this area
»  3 papers available on this topic

This is a summary of our
experiences of gathering
ethnographic data within an
online survey environment

In a nutshell
Its bloody difficult
•  Getting people to open up and talk about
themselves in an online survey is not easy
•  Many respondents are reticent about typing open
ended responses

What lessons have we learnt?

Making it feel Important
•  Asking people to put some effort into a piece of research, it
helps if you can show you have put an effort into its design too

Importance of establishing a rapport
Study
Aristotle
NLP
A qual researcher in action:
Episode 4 Season 4 Madmen

Techniques for establish rapport
•  Be candid and open as possible about
your objectives for the research
•  Communicate to respondents on their
level

A good example
Get is right and can result in up to 3x the volume of feedback

Another great example from InSites Consulting

Warming them up
Recommended reading
Don’t jump straight in with intimate questions

Use opening questions that are easy to answer
and encourage Narcissism & candidness!
•  How would your friends
describe you in one sentence?
•  Use 3 words to describe
your dress senses
•  Name some guilty pleasures
»  Films, TV programmes, food
•  Set the tone to be fun an
informal
Can gear these toward topic under consideration

The success of using projection techniques...
•  Imagine you are being interviewed by a magazine...
Word count up from 360 to 470!
Encourages more sound bite style responses

Guarded Reticence
Opened flood gates
What you have to focus on is getting
respondents over the hill
Once people have decided it is ok and fun the quality of feedback enters a
different dimension – not just in volume terms but more candid, sound bity

The role and importance of imagery
•  To help stimulate the imagination and trigger the memory
Important to tailor to the target audience

The moment you start boring them you have lost them!
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Q6 Q9 Q10 Q13 Q4 Q16 Q23 Q24 Q25 Q28 Q30
50% average reduction in word count for the same
question asked at start v end of 15 minute study

Showing examples of what other people have
written
•  Help set expectations
establish benchmark on how
much you expect them to
write
•  Guide people who are not
sure what they should say
•  Reassure respondents that
not expecting perfect
language
Can double to volume of feedback

Employing word counters
Encourages more feedback

Breaking up with traditional questions and
using these as thought leaders...
•  Which of these things have you done in the last
week
»  Please explain more about this activity...
•  Which of these words would you use to describe
how you feel about this topic
»  How would you summarise your feelings...
•  What was the best and what was the worst...
»  Explain why

Employing game play techniques
•  2 minute challenges
•  Word restriction rules

Piloting
•  More than most other types of research, when you are
trying to gather ethnographic style data piloting is really
valuable
•  Subtle differences to wording of questions can make a
big impact on word count
•  Improvements gains are not marginal they can be
dramatic
e.g. Moved from 100 words to over 400 words through a
series of micro sample pilots

File uploading
•  Highly sensitive to approach
»  5% to 50% compliance range!
•  Need to teach them how
•  To over come barriers need to explain how pictures will be used

How to encourage people to upload photos...

Remote Video interviewing
•  Technology available to do this
within an online survey
»  cannot honestly say we had much
of a response when we have
experimented with using to gather
Ethnographic style feedback
»  Almost impossible to do with a
human on the other end to guide
the process
•  That said, using remote video
techniques with human
interviewers I know to be an
extremely powerful Ethnographic
research technique
»  More candid feedback than when a
person enters a home

On the horizon
•  Points based feedback
» Incentivised by word count
» Spot prizes for good responses
•  Viral research approaches

Final thought: Gathering quality
ethnographic artefacts from
respondents really boils down to
how you ask the questions

Ray Poynter
The Future Place
Jon Puleston
GMI Interactive
Q & A

WWW.GMI-MR.COM | USING IMAGES IN ONLINE SURVEYS | 29
More info: jpuleston@gmi-mr.com
http://question-science.blogspot.com/

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