Archive for the ‘Research’ Category

Five Things Which Are New in the 2011 Census

Published on Mar 23rd, 2011 by Jack

Census Day for England and Wales is due to take place on March 27th 2011. As one would expect, The Census has changed greatly since its inception in 1801. For example, a major change to last year’s questionnaire was the inclusion of a question on religion. This year, several changes are afoot. But what are the changes to the 2011 Census vs. its predecessors?

Online Presence

The census has, it appears, moved with the times laid out by the modern day research industry. For the first time ever there will be an option to complete The Census online. From a respondent perspective this should make The Census less arduous and intimidating – often when an 11 page survey is placed in front of a respondent it is often greeted with a monotone sigh. Online methods should therefore, increase respondents willingness to participate. Additionally the clarity of the data gained via online methods should allow for increased accuracy. An online checking tool to monitor this process will also make research management easier for The ONS.

New Questions

As is seemingly Census tradition, there is additional content to this year’s survey. Further question subjects include; migration details, number of bedrooms owned and number of passports possessed. The benefit of these extra questions is (simply put) that the more the government knows about the nation, the more informed their decisions can be. Resultantly, policy making should become more representative of national needs due to a more encompassing data bank.

Increased Cost

As with any public spending, the finances of The Census have come under scrutiny. Despite the partial use of online data collection methods (which is usually deemed the cheapest method of data collection) the cost of The Census is reported to have doubled, at a rumoured level of £480 million. One has to question why the cost has increased despite seemingly more efficient methods. The answer to this is largely due to the cost of translation required to ensure immigrant’s information is collected. If this is so expensive then why do it you could ask? The goal of The Census is to take a snap shot of the population. What kind of snapshot of the UK in 2011 would ignore non-English speakers? A poor, unrepresentative one – hence the need to include such people and absorb the costs accordingly.

Increased Time

With the addition of the previously highlighted questions, The 2011 Census is 56 questions long and will take a household of 4 nearly 40 minutes to complete. In a society where time is precious, this is a considerable length of time. That said, with 52’59’487.66 minutes passing between Census’s – is 40 minutes too much to ask?

Increased Data Sharing

Census data is not divulged to the public until 100 years after it has been collected. However, under the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 Census data can be shared amongst the 27 EU member states and bodies of ‘approved researchers’. This does mean that, hopefully, institutes other than the UK government can benefit from the 2011 Census. However, it has also meant that Census naysayers such as NO2ID and Big Brother Watch have heightened their anti-Census sentiment.

Insights 101 – The Art of Listening

Published on Mar 17th, 2011 by Matthew

Not all words are created equal.  Some words are loaded with meaning while others mean almost nothing at all.  Very often this can be the same word.  The insights domain we operate in means that qualitative research is often packaged up into more glamorous wrapping.  But at its heart, it can be the almost artisanal skill of being able to decode the puzzle of language.

Of course it’s not just language.  Gesticulation, animation, body positioning all have impact, but the art of listening involves being able to know how much value to place on the words falling all around you.   Experienced researchers may rely on instinct.  They may rely on the ability to recognize when someone is talking to fill time and those who are expressing real sentiment.  Like an ECG graph, the pattern of real meaning in a qualitative research session is usually a series of ‘blips’ against a background of filler static.  If, however, you are not an experienced researcher, where do you start? What would you look for?

Here are a few tips:-

  1. Record everything – you are not as smart as you think.  There is no substitute for great notes or transcripts.  But do not rely on technology or transcription to abdicate the responsibility of active listening.
  2. Slow down – the mind has the ability to listen to 500 words a minute. The average person talks at the rate of around 125 words per minute.  This means our minds often ‘go-walkabout’ when we listen.  Stay focused and in the moment. This is hard when you are either moderating or watching a group.  But this skill separates the good from the great.
  3. Beware articulation – very few people can actually express themselves as clearly as they like.  We would like them to because it would make our lives easy.   In the melee of a focus group, it’s often easy to focus on the well structured and obvious.  Conversely watch for words or phrases like ‘…I can’t explain it’ or ‘it just is’.  These are not mechanical responses. These frustrating dead ends often hide deeper truths and significance.   In the same vein its true what they say ‘still waters run deep’.  Watch out for the quiet ones.  They can be frustrating in terms of group dynamics, but often those who are economical with their words are deliberate and incisive in what they say.
  4. Be sensitive to emotional context – Appreciate the difference between semantic meaning and emotive sentiment.  For example do the responses sit within a broader emotional context of appreciation, enlightenment, intrigue or maybe indifference?  It could well be the case that the more obvious the emotion, whatever it may be, the better.
  5. Don’t hold on too tight – Remember that the most effective results are based on the acceptance of 3 phases; Listening, Translating and Interpreting. Accept this premise and you are well on your way to becoming a better listener…in every part of your life.

City Dweller, Successful Fella.

Published on Mar 7th, 2011 by Rhiannon

I ❤ New York/ London/ Paris (delete as applicable). We’ve all seen the mugs, the bags, the T shirts. Cities are cool. Cities are empowering. Cities don’t sleep. Cities are free. Cities breed innovation…and… Cities raise expectations – “What do you mean you’re closed?!”, “What do you mean the next train is in 3 minutes?!”, “What do you mean you don’t sell chocolate covered snails?!”…you get the picture. The pace of life and consumerism in cities travels at the rate of knots – and brands and manufacturers are in the biggest rat race of all to be the first to offer the next best and newest thing to the hungry & curious city dweller.

As this month’s Trendwatching.com recognises, this urban pace and magnetism of cities is fundamental in feeding the economies of their country. And TW lists out some pretty overwhelming facts about just how important they are:

  1. Hong Kong receives more tourists annually than all of India.
  2. Tokyo and New York have an estimated GDP similar to those of Canada or Spain, while London’s GDP is higher than that of Sweden or Switzerland. (Source: UN Habitat, 2010).
  3. Paris, Lisbon, Brussels, Budapest and Seoul all account for more than 25% of their respective national economies. (Source: UN Habitat, 2010).
  4. And this is the whopper – Just 100 cities account for 30% if the world’s economy.

But, the world is changing and with it the world’s power cities are changing. Are the bright lights of London, Paris, Milan, New York dimming in the shadow of the new kids on the block – places like Shanghai, Beijing, Moscow, Mumbai and Sao Paolo? Maybe not yet – but if you’ve been lucky enough to go to any of these places recently, as I have, you will have felt the buzz of excitement in the air as a new generation of urbanites assert their role in their city. And with this, as we all know, is a new consumer – an awakened and even more curious and hungry consumer than their western counterparts. As TW notes ‘The lifestyle of urban Chinese consumers has changed from a “survive” mentality to an “enjoy life” one, with 54% now pursuing a more fun lifestyle. (Source: GfK Roper, 2010.)

As researchers, we are fully involved in the serious interest in the BRIC markets from a whole range of clients in a variety of sectors. BRIC are the ones to watch. But perhaps we need to appreciate the finer nuance needed to succeed in these markets. We need to grab these cities by the scruffs of their necks and learn all about them and their urban natives. With Delhi, Shanghai, São Paulo and Moscow expected to reach a GDP in excess of USD 500 billion by 2025—more than the GDP of entire nations such as Indonesia or Belgium today (Source: Trendwatching/ McKinsey, December 2010) – it would certainly seem prudent to understand what makes the city dweller tick.

DIY Brand Deconstruction

Published on Jan 24th, 2011 by Liz

I’m all for saving money where you can and if this means doing something yourself rather than paying extortionate amounts of money to someone to come round, suck air through their teeth and claim the job at hand is very complicated and will therefore cost ten thousand pounds (plus VAT), I’m all for it.  Let’s take the example of plumbing, I can plumb in a washing machine or dishwasher, take u-bends off sinks to remove blockages etc – it’s not rocket science.  But what if I needed something a bit more specialised doing, such as re-fitting an entire bathroom. Unlike plumbing in appliances where all the pipes and fittings are out of sight, a whole bathroom is on full view to anyone who visits it, and this includes future prospective buyers of my house.  It’s a well known fact that bodge DIY jobs have a negative effect on the valuation and saleability of your property, so although I know I could do the work myself, I also know the finished product would not be as good as the work done by someone who fits bathrooms day in day out.  I would get someone in to do it.

So why am I waffling on about plumbing on a Research blog?  Well, it’s because of a few experiences I have had of late of surveys which have popped up on websites I have visited which were clearly of the DIY variety.  And I’m not talking here of questionnaire design (wording, routing etc) I’m talking about visual design.  The company websites that these surveys popped up from were well designed, visually pleasing and extremely representative of the company’s branding in terms of colour, text, tone of voice etc.  But then the survey popped up, and suddenly I was transported from living the brand to a vision of monochrome monotony. ‘OMG’ I thought, what on earth is this, what are they doing???!!!  The sites I was looking at were for premium and luxury brands, but the only words that sprung to mind when I looked at these surveys were cheap, cost cutting, basic, primitive; they went completely against the brand image being portrayed on the main websites. These surveys just weren’t reflective of the brands.  They were jarring and left me with a negative impression.  I don’t purchase from these brands, but I wondered, what were people who do purchase from these brands thinking ie the customers?

And this takes me back to my plumbing illustration.  In the future I am selling my house; externally it looks great, well decorated to a high standard, the potential purchasers who are viewing the property are moving in in their minds and planning where they will put all the furniture – and then they get to the bathroom, which in the end we decided to fit ourselves.  The taps are wonky, the grouting of the tiles is messy, the purchasers start looking around the room and seeing the flaws on display, and they are starting to think that maybe all isn’t as great as it seems, and what other botch jobs are laying unnoticed behind the scenes???  They leave the house never to be heard of again.

Think of a DIY survey as a bad DIY job, and a house as a brand – 99% of the offering may be perfect, but it just takes one botch job to get people to walk away……

Research Resolutions

Published on Jan 7th, 2011 by Jack

The findings of the RSM “State of the Industry” survey reported out at the end of 2010 may have left some researchers feeling anxious about what 2011 may hold for the industry – a continuation of market researcher’s track record of being “consistently wrong”, prolonging our over optimistic outlook and the forward momentum of the much feared  DIY researcher. Conversely, RSM’s findings could be an excellent source for some 2011 research resolutions.

Method Matters

It is a mis-conception outside of the research community that anyone can put a questionnaire together, acquire some respondents and generate some data. As researchers will know, asking the appropriate questions to the correct people is not as easy as this. In years previous to 2011, the complexity of these fundamental research skills may have been under sold to research buyers. These buyers now take such methodological fundamentals for granted. Now in 2011, this should be the year where researchers start to communicate how integral (and complex) these underpinning research principals really are to the success of a study. By doing so, the mis-conception regarding these skills can be turned into an appreciation of their value.

Research IS Sexy

Hans Rosling recently stated that statistics is the sexiest subject in the world. I admit, statistics are sexy. However, even a quantitative researcher has to admit that the creative, artistic world of qualitative research, with its projective techniques and colourful schematics, is far superior in this domain compared to quantitative work. What does this give market researchers overall? A titillating industry. Maybe 2011 should be the year we position market research in this way. Presenting quantitative data in colourful, interactive ways combined with fully utilising the creative freedom allowed in how qualitative findings are shown whilst telling a story to fuel business decisions can turn the personification of research from that of an old man drawing a black and white bar chart into an artistic, original thinking twenty something.

Criticism Where Criticism Is Due

DIY research is one of MR’s biggest threats. This was highlighted by numerous articles in industry publications in 2010. 2011 needs to be the year where these criticisms are backed up by evidence and the anti-DIY perspective laid out to research buyers and clients. By doing this through parallel surveys and such the like we can show that the research agency products available today are of a higher quality and can add greater value vs. DIY offerings.