This document provides confirmation that Sarah Mole has been accredited as a moderator in the Unilever Accreditation Program. It includes a summary of positive feedback about her moderating skills, such as establishing group engagement and using creative exercises. It also provides two areas for Sarah to consider developing further: pursuing the "why" question too directly and challenging opinions in a more playful way. The document concludes with responsibilities of accredited moderators, such as ensuring thorough briefing and providing feedback to research leads.

1. 24 October 2013
Sarah Mole
MMR
United Kingdom
Subject: Unilever Accreditation Program
Dear Sarah,
Thank you for participating in the Unilever Accreditation Program. This is an important initiative and we appreciate
the time and effort that you put in to go through the process. We are delighted to confirm your accreditation as
Moderator and look forward to working with you in the future. The summary of the feedback provided about your
assessment is attached.
The accreditation is not just a badge but it comes with responsibilities and expectations about raising the bar of
each qualitative research project that you work on with Unilever. We have detailed the expectations of the ways of
working on qualitative research going forward on the page following the feedback summary. Please go through
them and get in touch with us for any clarifications.
Looking forward to working with you in the future.
Warm regards,
Manish Makhijani Global CMI Director
Unilever House
100 Victoria Embankment
Blackfriars
London
Work: +44 20 7822 6897
Mobile: +44 7881 311 077

2. Unilever Qualitative Accreditation Program: Researcher Summary
Name
Sarah Mole
Company
MMR
Accreditation applied for
Moderator
Screening date & location
26 March 2013, London
Screened by
Geoff Bayley
Screening method
Group, conversation
Accreditation Endorsed by:
Unilever Qualitative Leadership Team
(QLT)
Decision
Moderator Accreditation
Feedback date & method
February 2014, via e-mail
Feedback given by
Jessica Uys & Manish Makhijani
Summary of feedback including development areas
Sarah moderated with confidence and was bold and innovative in her approach. She considered her elicitation
approaches thoughtfully and had a sound rationale for her questions and creative exercises. She created a session in
which respondents were fully engaged and the research issues were addressed with depth and imagination. As a
result she is awarded Unilever Moderator Accreditation.
Sarah established shared group belonging, showing a warm and open style and displayed sensitivity to the energy
and dynamic of the group, ensuring that all contributed. She was skillful in her use of both non-verbal affirmations
and verbal techniques, such as echoing and summarizing. Allayed to this, Sarah demonstrated degrees of confidence
and boldness to build reflective and imaginative response. Her confident approach was evident in her choice of
icebreaker exercise which entailed pairing respondents for introductions, evidence of the value Sarah places on
introductions to divest her of any ‘unhelpful’ leadership authority, to set up a collaborative mood and introduce the
concept of attentive listening and recall by respondents. As such, it worked as a good mental springboard for the
group. Following the warm-up, Sarah put a range of products on the table for a sector mapping exercise and
absented herself from the room, which might have been intended to allow the group to take control themselves, but
in doing so, it prevented her hearing and then following up on spontaneous responses regarding brands and
products. Sarah did well in her use of the ‘button projective’ for exploring Vaseline brand perceptions and imagery,
which she explained as a tangential way to spark the underlying emotional connections with a brand and to trigger
fresh and unanticipated associations. Sarah not only made good using of varying techniques, but also demonstrated
a clear understanding of why she was using them and how they made sense in the context of the project needs.
Sara’s moderating was both subtle and penetrative. To prompt response she made good use of comparisons and
opposites and provided encouragement through affirmative wording e.g. ‘that’s a really good point’. In exploring the
concept Sarah firstly collected individual spontaneous impressions before moving on to a shared deconstruction of
the idea and consideration of the benefits and appeal or barriers, indicating sensitivity to the potential impact of a
consensus approach. The tonality in her probes was mostly encouraging without becoming interrogatory or inducing
a negative sense of accountability.
Overall, Sarah came across as a highly capable and innovative researcher and her moderation achieved the standard
of excellence required for her to be accredited as a Unilever Moderator. In terms of development, there are some
areas for consideration to enhance the qualities she displayed:
 In laddering responses, she could become a little too direct in pursuing the ‘Why’ question in a way which
can lead to rationalization. She should focus on maintaining the emotional tone in a more circumspect
tonality by applying alternative approaches such as ‘Mmmh... I wonder why?’
 She could develop even further the ability to be ‘playfully combative’, in order to challenge opinions
expressed and to check strength and depth of feeling, for example, where they resisted the concept she
could have challenged them to imagine a scenario, no matter how improbable, where they would consider
using the product.

3. Responsibilities of an Accredited Moderator
Moderator Accreditation comes with the responsibilities of maintaining and improving the high standards of
qualitative research. We at Unilever have arrived at certain ways of working that we believe go a long way in
raising the bar. While the CMI teams are being trained on those, we expect that Accredited Researchers should
also follow the same in their ways of working. This means that Moderators need to:
1. Ensure that they have been fully briefed on the project by the Research Lead, in good time, well before
the start of fieldwork, and that they understand the client brief and the research objectives.
2. Ensure that there is sufficient time built into the briefing process to allow them to internalise the issues,
understand recruitment criteria/sample composition, and familiarise themselves with the discussion
guide, including the rationale for different projective techniques and role of each piece of stimulus
material.
3. Feel comfortable about using their experience to challenge proposed discussion guides and projective
techniques in discussion with the Research Lead should they feel they can contribute to an improved
approach.
4. Understand that their role as moderator is to provide a point of view to the Research Lead on issues
arising from the groups or interviews they run, for example, about recruitment, group dynamics,
comprehension issues, discussion order
5. Work collaboratively with Research Leads, being involved wherever possible in the analysis to ensure that
there is no loss of richness in understanding, and their views on key emerging themes are valued and
heard.