QUALITITIVE RESEARCH

If the need exists to understand underlying behaviours, the hidden meanings behind why people behave the way they do, or will behave, then qualitative research is a great approach.

People are complex and contrary to belief they are not easy to stereotype. They can react very differently to one another in response to pretty much anything, and unless we understand their underlying feelings which we call "human truths" we are limited to what we don't know we don't know.

Extracting this information is only one element. Whether we are using focus groups, an in-depth interviews, or even online discussion boards the information we collect is only as good as the skills that the researcher has to get below the surface. 

At Perceptive we use several advanced techniques which draw on concepts originating in cognitive science. The most common which we will briefly share with you is called Unstructured Narrative. This is quite different to Story Telling which some researchers claim is cutting edge. A story implies a beginning and an end and unfortunately both of these parts are largely useless for the researcher. What we are really looking for is rich narrative, and preferably captured through peer to peer communication. Riddled inside this narrative are hidden insights which we refer to as "weak signals" which harbour evidence of what the person actually means by what they are saying. We then analyse these weak signals to create thematics that help us develop our research findings.

When it comes to methodologies, we tend to prefer the online environment. This is preferred for many practical reasons i.e. geographic freedom, ease of managing larger groups etc... But the core benefits are actually in the way we can interact with the group collectively, interpersonally, and most importantly we can foster and observe interpersonal interaction and experience sharing between the participants.

It is rare to conduct qualitative research on its own. Often there is a need to quantify the insights captured in which case we would need to develop a quantitative research approach. Click here to learn more about how we would develop this. 

Check our work for examples of what we do and who we do it with. Also, feel free to contact us to chat in more detail.