qualitative reflections

Is There a Role for Social Media

in Qualitative Research?
The two can work together for better results
By Naomi R. Henderson

few years ago, I would have answered this question

with a resounding No, wanting to hold onto a
purist attitude that qualitative research is a handson and face-to-face process that cannot work outside those
parameters.
It is interesting to note that early in 2011, social media
eclipsed email as a communication tool, and its popularity
continues to rise. That fact alone should be a heads-up for
anyone who thinks this
tool is a fad that will pass.
When online focus groups
emerged toward the end of
the last decade, there was a
fear that traditional groups
were dead. That didnt
prove true and both exist as
good tools when correctly
applied. That is likely to be
the case for the use of social
media as a research tool for
qualitative researchers.
If I look back at the car
industry as a metaphor, I would be the person screaming,
Automatic means you dont have any control over the car;
stick shifts are best! And I would have been proven wrong
as time flowed on.
What now seems to be true is that there is a brand of
qualitative research that is like stick-shift cars very handson. You can feel the road when you drive and the driving
experience is rich and engaging. That would include focus
groups, IDIs, triads and other qualitative models that usually
take place in front of one-way mirrors.
Now, automatic cars have onboard GPS systems, the
ability to link a phone to the sound system and speakers
all throughout the carall items now considered commonplace that were previously only seen in 1950s science fiction
movies. Cars are more supportive of the driver, and various
options enhance the driving experience. That kind of

research would include Twitter, Facebook and forms of market research online communities.
There is a role for social media tools in qualitative research and some of those tools have been around before the
term social media was invented. For example, the notes
taken by customer service representatives when consumers
called an 800 number to register a complaint or ask a question about a product or service sold is using what we now
call social media. Those
comments were logged
in and often reviewed by
various departments in a
company and from that
review, there were often
changes in design, efficacy,
pricing, etc. As well, those
logged comments were
the direct voice of the
consumer without filters.
Sometimes, good ad copy
came from those kinds of
comments. Analysts chose
selected quotes to share with management and helped shape
decision-making.
Up to the time of Twitter or Facebook, no one questioned
this soft side of VOC research. Now, with technology on
phones and computers rising exponentially every quarter, it
would be silly to miss the opportunities that social media
research can provide to qualitative researchers. But, in doing
so, keep in mind the stick-shift vs. the automatic car. Both
cars use gas; both provide easy transportation and get the
driver from point A to point B. It is the manner of driving
that is different, not the end destination.
The customer service representative is now an automated
voice and customers are often directed to websites. This
makes it easier to collect information and, when an email
address is recorded, easier for a firm to link back to that
consumer for add-on sales. The box that is provided for

Keep in mind the stick-shift vs. the

automatic car. Both cars use gas; both
provide easy transportation and get the
driver from point A to point B. It is the
manner of driving that is different,
not the end destination.

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additional comments can be seen as a qualitative tool.

The reason social media may not be seen with the same
equanimity as traditional qualitative research is in the application or the rigor of the tools used to collect the data. In
traditional research, there are several steps used to screen
participants so the right respondent is in the room for
the research. When using social media for qualitative
purposes, it is possible for someone to pose as a user of a
product or service or non-user of the same, and their use/
non-use may not be genuine.
They can answer threads in a back-and-forth Q&A
session on a phone or website, but there is no way to
measure if they are the right respondent (age, race, gender,
etc.) or if they are being completely truthful when answering questions about usage levels. But cheaters and repeaters have been part of the qualitative industry for years,
and good researchers have found ways to work around
that problem. I have no doubt there are tools in the making to ensure the right respondent is part of the research
plan when social media is being used.

A Supplement to Qualitative Research

Here are some ways social media could be useful to qualitative researchers:
1. hearing/seeing the language used to talk about a product/service/idea;
2. determining the degree of passion when talking about
products/services/ideas;
3. showing how consumers see the product/service/idea in
relationship to similar things; and
4. catching information that is fresh before it has been
over-massaged by news media.
Social media research can become the tool to use before
traditional qualitative research is applied and can allow a
good researcher to more quickly hone in on the hot points a
client wants explored.
One of the challenges that social media provides is TMI:
too much information. It is easy to collect and there can be a
lot of it, almost like grains of sand on a small beach. So the
smart researcher is like the one-eyed man in the land of the
blindable to see a path through the plethora of data that
is collected, being able to decide quickly what is useful and
what is not.
New research skills need to come into play when using
social media as a research tool. The chart above shows traditional research tools that any good qualitative researcher
needs to have and the new tools to add to that toolbox.
A term was coined a few years back called bricolage:
the marriage of several types of data collection strategies to
reach a project objective. That might be a survey combined
with 20 IDIs and six focus groups or it might be 10 in-home
ethnographies, 20 telephone surveys and a Delphi Forum.
With the advent of social media as a research tool, brico-

lage can be extended even further to provide more avenues

for finding out what consumers are thinking and what drives
their decision-making.

Traditional Tools for Qualitative MR

Synthesizing and then analyzing

Distilling and then analyzing

Collecting information

Reviewing collected information

Owning informationkeeping the

knowledge close to the chest

Sharing information quickly

and easily

Being subjectively involved from

start to finish, looking only at
what supports hypotheses

Being objectively involvedwilling to

shift beliefs as new data comes in
Expanding points of view by collecting data from different sources and
looking for common themes

Defending points of view based

on narrow research designs

Here is a recent example of the power of social media

research: Look at the 11th season of American Idol. On
the final night of voting, more than 122 million votes rolled
in via texting, direct dial voting or voting thru a Facebook
link. The winner: a 17-year-old male country singer. In the
early years of American Idol, a final night of voting was
considered a record high at 8 million votes.
For American Idol decision makers, social media
research was used to check the direction of voters thinking
from week to week, and that data was plowed back into
strategies about what songs to choose and what outfits to
wear for the shows. Simple social media tools helped shape
a career path for a singer. The bonus: All those wonderful
ad dollars rolling in because the show was so successful in
exactly hitting the right touch points for viewers and having
them tune in each week in record numbers.
Focus groups would have been too slow and phone
surveys too time-consuming to create enough of a sample
size for that kind of decision-making. But 500,000 tweets in
six hours made it easy to add up simple responses to two to
three key questions and quickly move forward.
I am not advocating tossing traditional qualitative
research to the curb. Too much of my professional life has
been aimed at making those historical methods a useful
strategic tool. All I want to communicate is that a smart
qualitative market researcher would be wise to explore the
many avenues where social media research can serve as an
enhancement. Ill always love my stick-shift car, but it is nice
to ride in an automatic with a turbo engine from time to
time. MR
Naomi R. Henderson is the founder and CEO of RIVA Market Research
and Training Institute in Rockville, Md., and is the author of Secrets of a
Master Moderator. She may be reached at NHenderson@rivainc.com.

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Additional Tools Needed to Handle

Social Media in a Qualitative Arena

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