Journey to an online future

Reading through the nationals this weekend, a definite theme emerges: how society is becoming disconnected to reality. Although this could read how it's becoming connected to a new reality.

What has prompted this coverage? Well, “events, dear boy, events”, plus a certain amount of serendipity. Just days after the televised "big three" debate India Knight, in the Sunday Times, talks about how she went to a friend's house to watch it — but took her laptop with. She wanted to be connected to the many thousands she knew would be tweeting through the debate, with intelligent, topical banter, rather than restricted to ITV's predictably stodgy fare.

And the other article that prompted this theme? One on addiction to computer games, where an increasingly youthful audience prefers life online with selected friends to one where they have to deal with the pressures of everyday life.

Online comfort factor

So if two such distinct audiences are more comfortable with online than face to face, it's hardly surprising that clients are testing qual research in this area. In the last issue we introduced this topic and sought their views on it. This time it's the turn of researchers.

The first task we set them was to attempt a definition of digital qual, but that seemed to present a challenge too far. Instead, researchers offered situations where online qual is used: online follow-ups to face-to-face group discussions, online bulletin boards or Bulletin Board Focus Groups (BBFGs), using email for pre or post tasking, netnography, virtual home visits and the like.

There was no such reticence about some of the issues raised. First, worries about client perceptions loom large. “I recently attended an interview with a large retailer,” says Geraldine Pratten of Filling The "GAP" Research, “which would involve running a large online panel — and it seems clear to me that the days of the group/depth are numbered in their eyes. They clearly see it as a tool to get instant feedback (i.e. overnight).”

Yet worries about time pressures, quality, a focus on reportage rather than analysis, existed long before the move online. What is intensifying them is a strange mix of factors: fear of the unknown (technology), non-researchers advising on research matters, and others with a vested interest in selling their products or userbases.

As Ben Lovejoy of Plug and Play says, “a bunch of unanalysed comments grabbed without probing from a group on online personas of unknown identity and unidentifiable characteristics and sprinkled verbatim into a quant report is *not* qual! “Properly designed, recruited and moderated online qual can be as valuable as conventional qual. Properly designed and moderated (but not recruited) online qual can be helpful. But much of what is being bandied around is the online equivalent of "I was eavesdropping on a bunch of strangers in the pub last night, and they said..."”