Qualitative Research Techniques | Shreyanka Basu at SIMClairvoyance 2011

True to her role of a researcher, Shreyanka Basu, Group Business Director, IMRB opened the afternoon sessions with a survey of the kind of information the audience was looking for form this session on research techniques. A lot of questions came up ranging from tools for qualitative research, difficulties of the exercise in a diverse country like India and sample as a true representation of the whole to the subjective nature and danger of personal biases in qualitative

research.

Shreyanka began with discussing the primary tool for traditional Qualitative research – Focus Group Discussion (FGD) and its pros and cons. She threw open the floor and asked the audience to hazard guesses with regard to issues with FGDs and received several spot-on answers including comfort levels and conformity. She called upon a video about the famous Asch Experiment reiterating the issues and bringing into focus the technicalities of informational and normative conformity.

“Motivation for behaviours is very important as the same behaviour can have many different motivations”, was the statement with which she shifted the paradigm and began to give insights into innovations in research techniques. She believes that “Nobody is as close to a consumer as a qualitative researcher.” Touching upon achieving a good purposive sample response group by including polarities of the universe and trying to get diametrically different answers, she prescribed ‘snowballing’ as the best way to choose the right respondents.

She revealed a day in the life of a qualitative researcher by showcasing the depth and detail of each survey and interaction. “Observation”, she says, “is the key. Because only if you can move towards understanding and conclusion.” During the highly interactive session, she emphasized that qualitative research demand us to permeate the consumer’s life and that it is a method leveraged to do future visualization. Stock audits, wardrobe audits, daily diaries, live contact over long periods, video observations and maybe taking a tractor ride are a few of the techniques that can be used to study identity and attitude of respondents of a qualitative survey. She shared her personal experience of once studying 430 bathrooms to zero in on the final bathroom for an ad! She touched upon disruption techniques and the 3Cs i.e. the Couch-Coffee-Conversation techniques as methods of gaining insights. She concluded the session by saying “What it takes to be a good qualitative researcher are curiosity and a candid attitude!

(with inputs from Sneha Padmanabhan, MBA 2013)