How 5-Minutes Can Save Your Study

The optimal approach to market research is to conduct qualitative research first. Then once we understand the underlying issues, we implement quantitative research. This is because qualitative research provides us with the insights and suggests the questions that we want to quantify. Once we have finished a series of focus groups or depth interviews, we are much more able to develop a quantitative survey that covers all of the important topics of interest.

But this is rarely what happens.

The Danger in Not Knowing

If we jump into a quantitative survey without a thorough understanding of the topic under consideration, there is the danger that we skip an important issue. We may also ask questions in an unclear way or bias responses because the way we approach the subject is different from how respondents think about the topic. Without a qualitative research phase, our quant study can have major problems.

But qualitative research has two challenges. It is time consuming and costly. And clients have limited time and budgets.

How 5-Minutes Can Save Your Study

There is a partial solution — a quick open-ended survey.  Today, there are lots of inexpensive and easy-to-use tools that allow us to quickly create a 5-minute web-based survey with all open ended questions.

We can program a 5-minute surveys quickly, collect data, and have results in 24 to 48 hours. We may field it ourselves to roughly 50 respondents or ask our field partner for 50 completes. For analysis, we print out all the open-ended responses, read them, and modify our final quantitative survey as appropriate. No cross tabs. No tables. No sophisticated analytical text recognition. We simply read them all.

Think of This as Insurance – Not a Substitute for Focus Groups

Recognize that this is NOT a substitute for a full set of focus groups or depth interviews. But it is a solution that is very quick and cheap to implement. It is a compromise when a full qualitative phase is out of the question.

These quick open-ended surveys do not providing the depth of insights that one acquires from traditional qualitative research. But a short, quick, open-ended survey can provide valuable insurance against major missed issues.

It is also excellent for “closing” open-ended questions on a quantitative survey. And with easy to use survey programming software we can program these simple surveys ourselves and collect the data lightning fast. And for very little cost. Nice eh?

Three Tips for Success

We often implement these quick open-ended surveys to gain insights before we implement a major quantitative survey. These are not a pretest of the surveys (which we also do). The purpose is to understand the topic, in general, to ensure the quantitative survey is concise, thorough and covers all important issues. To ensure the best success we suggest the following:

1. Ask for Specifics – We ask respondents to be very specific in their answers. Examples of how we phrase this include:

• Please write as much as you like and be as specific as possible.
• Please be very specific so we know what information to include.
• Please be very specific so that we know exactly how to help and address your concerns.

2. Ask respondents to write a lot! – We want thorough answers. A one or two word answer tells us very little. So we ask respondents to write a lot. You would be surprised how often a valuable insight is disclosed on the third or fourth sentence of an answer. Examples of how we phrase this include:

• Please be very thorough. Please write in full sentences and include everything you can think of.
• Please be very specific and elaborate as much as possible.
• Use as much space as needed. We will read every word of what you write.

3. Ask the same question three ways – We have found this to be extremely useful in discovering important and previously unknown information. We ask the same open-ended question three different ways and each respondent answers all three questions. Examples of how we phrase this include:

1. What specific [information/features/characteristics] would you like to see included in a new [product / service]?
2. What is your greatest [wish / hope] for [user of product / service] regarding [product / service]?
3. What are the issues / challenges [user of product / service] has with [product / service]? What is he / she doing/not doing that needs improvement in the area of [product / service]?

Works for All Type of Respondents

As long as we are implementing a web-based survey (which is typically the case) it does not matter who the respondent is. This works for consumers as well as B2B respondents. An IT manager, CIO or Purchasing Agent can be surveyed as easily as a mother with kids, a golfer looking for clubs or a senior shopping for homeowners’ insurance.

Conclusion

While a quick, open-ended survey is not a substitute for a full scale qualitative research phase, it is valuable insurance when qualitative research is not practical due to time or cost constraints. The advent of easy to use survey software allows us to quickly create a survey in 30-minutes or less. Data collection and analysis is typically completed in two days. This is NOT a substitute for pretesting a quantitative survey. Instead, think of it as a cheap insurance policy to minimize the chances that your quantitative survey missed an important issue. Remember, a 5-minute survey may save your expensive quantitative study!