Time for research to become social and give back

* Featured, Research — By Laura Morris on January 24, 2012 3:59 pm

Sean Bruich, Head of Measurement Research at Facebook has suggested that for research to prosper, it needs to become social once again.

His comments have been echoed by others:

“We are on the cusp of a real paradigm shift in the way organisations do research – it’s becoming more social. The whole premise of people plodding through surveys in isolation is starting to look outdated. Clever organisations are learning to harness the wisdom of crowds and then distil the essence of that wisdom.”

Michael Silverman, former Head of Employee Insight at Unilever

Hasn’t research always been social?

Surely research has always been social (it involves people after all). Just the other day I was on my way to a client meeting when my taxi driver asked me what I did for a living. Having explained that I was a market researcher, he then spent the next 20 minutes telling me that he was a regular attendee of “research parties” and really enjoyed the whole experience of turning up to a nice venue to meet other people, air his views on a particular topic for a few hours and have a few refreshments in the process (while getting paid for the luxury of doing so). I quickly realised he was referring to the good old focus group and felt a mixture of dismay at the ongoing problem of serial group attendees followed by frustration that my hard toil and late night slogs as a moderator were being trivialised as a mere party.

However, I mused over his comments later on and arrived at the conclusion that framing a focus group as a “party” a) wasn’t altogether that inaccurate and b) is actually not such a bad idea in terms of focusing our attention as researchers on delivering a social, entertaining experience for our respondents. After all, a more enjoyable research experience surely encourages a more interactive session which in turn helps nurture better insights.

The problems of survey research

To some extent, I can empathise with Facebook’s comments. Delivering a more social experience has historically been a lot more challenging in terms of survey research (for a long time, the mainstay quantitative methodology of the research industry). Survey research, unless conducted within the context of an online community or a longitudinal panel, is by very nature a one-way conversation; the researcher sets the questions and the respondent fills in their answers, at no point being able to ask their own questions, clarify their understanding or get truly immersed in the purpose and meaning of the research.

Survey research is indeed the antithesis of social – we extract data from respondents, use their answers for our own analysis purposes and rarely give anything back other than a cursory monetary incentive. In some instances, admittedly, researchers do share a final copy of the research report with respondents at the end of the project but all too often the respondents are long forgotten by that point.

There is at least now consensus that in order to secure the long-term viability of survey research as a methodology, the research industry needs to get better at delivering an engaging survey experience (long, boring questionnaires with question grid after question grid should be avoided at all cost).

Gamification and online communities

Although not enough validation research has yet been done into whether the data extracted from gamified surveys is actually better than that from an equivalent non-gamified survey, the concept of gamification takes the research industry in the right direction in terms of focusing attention on the user experience.

Online communities are also a step in the right direction in terms of socialising research and encouraging consumers to become collaborators and co-creators in the research process rather than passive bystanders. Within an online community, members can share opinions not just with the client and the researcher but with their fellow members. This exchange of ideas over a long period coupled with a more meaningful role and involvement in the research process helps to foster commitment and engagement which in turn leads to, arguably, better insights. Everybody’s a winner.

What do respondents get out of research?

The research industry could still do more, not just to make research more social, but to make it more entertaining, enjoyable and involving. One of the criticisms often levied is that all too often we use respondents in order to extract feedback and information without giving anything back in return (other than cash).

Giving back could be as simple as offering respondents personal insight as a result of taking part. There’s no reason that participants shouldn’t come away from the research process having learnt something interesting about themselves. A simple example of putting this into practice could be telling the respondent at the end of the survey how their answers compared to others who took it (for example, others of the same age, gender and social grade). This tactic has clearly worked well for Amazon e.g. “people like you also bought xxx”.

Personal insight and respondent engagement

A recent project that Brass conducted in conjunction with Seven Seas found that the use of personal insight had a huge impact on respondent engagement. By allowing respondents to discover their ‘true joint age’ and compare it to their biological age using the Joint Age Calculator (and delivering a personalised joint care report to the respondent upon completion) we were able to attract almost 22,000 people to take part in just two months with very little promotion or incentivisation. The client benefited from a robust aggregate picture of the state of the UK’s joint health and individuals who took part got to learn something interesting and useful about themselves.

Integrating research into social

It is perfectly possible to integrate survey research within social media, a bit like Facebook polls now. Not necessarily every question of the survey (client confidentiality is clearly mandatory) but perhaps respondents could be allowed to share the results of less personal/non-sensitive questions with their Facebook friends or their Twitter followers should they so wish. A Trojan horse approach could be taken here by mixing in such questions amidst those that our clients are really interested in to create a win/win situation.

Taking these steps can only help to encourage more respondent engagement and ensure market research has a more positive profile amongst the general public.

Does research need to become more social or is it already social? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/

Tags: facebook, gamification, market researchers, online communities, research, Social Media