Sustainable Research

Background

The world is on the brink of a massive social & economic upheaval in that the western style civilisation that has developed since the Industrial revolution needs to be re-invented. We can no longer assume that we will have limitless energy – we need sustainable energy sources; we can no longer build our way of life on the assumption of limitless resources – we have to develop sustainable resources; we can no longer drive business in the profit driven ways of the past – we need sustainable business; we can no longer assume that consumers will freely give of their time – to researchers, honestly. We need to develop sustainable research.

 

On the 2nd June 2010 Ms Gunilla Broadbent, President of ESOMAR touched on this subject when she said that ‘ESOMAR seeks to gather insight and promote debate on how market research can lead the way to a more ethical, responsible and creative society’! Her conclusion emphasised that market research must move from the paradigm of ‘The age of Questioning’ to that of ‘The age of Listening’.

 

The rest of the world has largely discarded traditional survey methods and have moved to using online methods and ESOMAR has provided guidelines on the ethical conduct of online market research in the form of ‘26 Questions to help research buyers of online samples’. These 26 can be viewed at www.panelservicesafrica.co.za

 

We'll be examining each of these questions from the African context point of view and will discuss the implications of not getting the correct answers.

Question One of 26

What experience does your company have with providing online samples for market research?

 

‘The answer to this question could help the buyer to form an opinion about the relevent experience of the sample provider. How long has the sample provider been providing this service and do they have, for example, a market research, direct marketing or more technological background? Are the samples provided solely for 3rd party research, or does the company also conduct proprietary work using their panels?’

 

The relevance of the questions relate to the core issues mentioned by Gunilla Broadbent that the yardstick should be the potential to move toward a more ethical, responsible and creative society.

Ethical

Does the prospective supplier subscribe to codes of conduct, such as the SAMRA code? Do they have a track record of integrity in the industry? There are many ways that technological list management can be utilised in unethical ways – whether deliberately or out of ignorance. For example, a survey link is easy to send out to a list. What list? Is the list being SPAMMED? Have people on the list provided informed consent, Has the list been built using double opt-in procedures? The ethical issue goes beyond simply sending out a survey. This now relates to the extent to which the data has integrity. If a survey can be completed by more than one person, or more than once, then the data should be discarded because the analyst cannot know whether a person has sent the survey to friends, to competitors, to interested parties who have a vested interest, or even whether the responses are generated automatically by an avatar or robot. A buyer should avoid dealing with research suppliers who do not comply with these standards – and there are blue chip research contractors in South Africa that do not! Any survey that is not run on international standard survey software (there are only 5 or 6 really competent systems commercially available worldwide) is very likely to be in breach of these or similar issues.

Responsible

For a company to take responsibility for their sample, they should be undertaking their own research as well as supplying sample externally. A measure of the calibre of the sample source should be open to inspection in this way. One of the bugbears of market research has been complaints about the standard of fieldwork in different research providers. There has never yet been an external audit, or any other way of evaluating the traditional (ie F2F, telephonic or focus group) sample provided by a research supplier. Not only is it more important with electronic sampling, it is also easier, provided the systems and processes are of a professional standard and are complied with – these should be documented and will be auditable. The responsibility of the research supplier is to the wider audience as well, and, not just focused on simply getting the survey done. This responsibility is to the most maligned people in the market – the respondents! Great care should be exercised when sending out mailers and questionnaires – there isn’t an interviewer to moderate or explain a bad question. For this reason any responsible online research company will have senior communications professionals on their staff. Even spelling is extremely important.

Creative

Creativity comes from the human mind. Creativity is not the result of copy & paste work. We deny ourselves, our stakeholders and out society when we do things mindlessly. Market research has been obsessed with measurement – the application of a stimulus and then the coding of those questions – which is then treated as a metric. Researchers rarely listen to what respondents may have to say – mainly because we don’t create that opportunity, and partly because research technology does not allow for easy and quick communication from a respondent to be transmitted through the fieldwork, processing and reporting mesh to the decision maker. The online environment enables the creative researcher to discover more insight, to measure with more precision, and to elicit information from respondents more successfully. The speed of answering a question in the context of a questionnaire provides hypotheses about a respondent’s understanding of the question. Clicking and dragging provides a more engaging way of obtaining information from respondents. Because of the randomisation of options it is more likely to be better than paper based results.

 

Respondents of today demand engagement – they get it in all other forms of communication, so why shouldn’t they get it from researchers. When shopping for online research suppliers, the buyer should be asking whether there are creative people in the company who are experienced in providing online research.

 

During my 35 years in research I have actively been seeking ways of bringing the decision maker closer to the mind of the person involved (aka respondent), and for the past 6 years Panel Services Africa has focused on building a team of people to ensure the highest international standards are brought to the practice of online market research. This series of notes are drawn from our internal training documents and from the Online 101 training course run by Panel Services Africa.

Mike Broom
Panel Services Africa
June 2010