Teens can be one of the least reliable when it comes to conducting any kind of qualitative research and online qualitative is no exception.  Hours can be wasted trying to track them down to complete a series of activities in a quality fashion.  The key to all of this is bringing the activities to them.

One thing we do know is that teens are online – all of them, all the time.  They’ve also never known a pre-internet (and smartphone) world, so communicating online is as natural for them as talking.  But just knowing they’re online isn’t enough.  We need to understand how they communicate, where they communicate and what motivates them to communicate beyond the normal monetary incentives.  It’s as equally important to recognize their limitations.

No surprises

Without giving away too much about the research, teens and their parents should be given an overview of the activities and what’s required at the recruiting stage.  This prevents people from over promising when they’ve got too many additional commitments through school, sports or other activities.  It also allows them to plan if you need to see them in action with their friends or family.  Research projects fall down the list of priorities when real life competes.

Social activities: a great way to share and connect

Teens with similar interests are eager to connect with each other and comfortable in online forums.  They are used to conversations that are presented as threaded.  That said, satisfying a research goal isn’t going to be their primary motivator.  They will want to present themselves, see what others have to offer and how they stack up against their peers.  Consider making all activities, that aren’t sensitive in nature, social – but only let them see what others are saying after they post about themselves.  This can easily be accomplished on IdeaStream^tm through the use of our online blogs and discussion boards.  If you tell them they will be able to browse through other posts, videos and comments after they complete their activity they will be more motivated to complete.

Why won’t they finish the last three activities???

One frustration I hear about constantly is the loss of interest from teen participants.  Halfway through the project, response rates dwindle and no amount of money seems to be able to change that.  While discussing how to approach this, one researcher suggested launching all activities (or most activities) at one time – allowing them to chose the ones they want to complete and in what order they’d like to do it.  They’re told upfront that they must finish three-quarters of the exercises in order to receive their incentives.  This puts them in control.  She indicated that more often than not, all respondents ultimately end up completing all the activities.  This idea seems to make sense if you are flexible with how you can structure your research.

A teen and their phone – The love story

It’s no secret a mobile phone is a teens best friend.  From texting, tweeting, organizing friends and sharing media, phones provide a way for teens to reach out to their inner circle and to the masses.  IdeaStream^tm Mobile allows us to reach into their worlds with similar ease.  Not only does mobile allow you to capture ‘in the moment’ insights but it removes barriers to getting information from them in the form of text, video and pictures.  Whether they are sitting in their room at night, on a break at school or out with their friends – we can reach them and they can reach us.  Don’t be afraid to ask them to get creative with these tools – use them in conjunction with other technologies and most importantly – make it fun!

Using sequencing as an incentive

People like immediate gratification – especially teens.  You can build a reward system into your research through sequencing.  Consider locking special games, polls or privileged information behind an activity you really need them to complete.  Response rates shoot way up when a perceived reward is available immediately.

At the end of the day – Kids will be kids

Teens are more independently minded and have greater purchasing power than ever before, but alas they are still kids.  They live in a world where their attention is being competed for by any number of outside sources – so patience and perseverance is key.  Hopefully some of the suggestions we list above can make this road a bit less bumpy for you.

A client got in touch today asking about some of the differences between long and short term communities.

The subject is complex, and would certainly benefit from a long and considered post.

While we put this together, here are a few key points that we shared, from our expeience helping clients prepare for the transition from short to long term communities…

We’ll look to build on this in time. Of course, if you have any insights to share, feel free to comment and add to the conversation.

When planning your online qual study, bulletin board focus group or research community, one of the first questions you’re likely to ask yourself is ‘How am I going to recruit my participants?’

Dub has a lot of experience helping researchers answer this question and providing great participants that post fantastic responses to the questions and activities deployed. From time to time we get asked about whether or not it’s a good idea to recruit from a panel, so we thought we’d flesh out our approach to this in order to help you arrive at your own decision.

In the most part, online qual (asynchronous) methods falls into one of two camps; Q&A and Activities.

1. Q&A.  This is perhaps the most typical approach taken to bulletin board focus groups where participants are asked a sequence of inter-related questions to which they respond with simple open text-based answers. I’m also including simple ‘discussions’ in this scenario. Responses are likely to be quick and short, though you sometimes find that the most engaged participants will write more than expected. Responses are also instant, meaning participants aren’t being asked to go away and carry out an exercise or prepare anything offline.
2. Activities. If you’re looking to immerse yourself in the world of the consumer or if you want to understand their behaviours, attitudes and emotions then you’ll be best advised taking a more activity or exercise based approach. These might include online diaries, research blogs, shopper safaris or collages, for example. This style of engagement requires participants to either leave their PC and carry out the task, or use their mobile phone to capture the moment. It requires more effort and more time, and may require considerably more thought time, unlock Q&A.

Now that you’ve got an understanding of the two most typical styles of interaction deployed within online qual, you can start to see which recruitment method is best. Panelists – people opting into taking part in quick-turnaround surveys – are happy receiving small rewards for their time. These might include reward points, vouchers or cash incentives which equate to a few pence/cents or sometimes a few pounds/dollars. Ask panelists to get involved in activities that may take as long as an hour a day rather than 10 minutes, for the same rewards, and you’re setting yourself up for a fall. Ask yourself, would you do it?

If you want to take a successful activity-based approach and are planning to ask participants to do more than just answer a simple question, be prepared to reward them with more. Get it right and you’ll witness some startling results, including engaged participants that want to do more and more. Get it wrong and you’ll experience a virtual ghost-town and a very unhappy client.

So ask yourself, what would you be prepared to do for a few pence/cents, versus how far would you go if you were being rewarded with the equivalent of £50. It’s a no-brainer in our eyes, so don’t take the decision lightly and choose the relevant path based on what level of response and output you really want.

For more information and advice on how to recruit for online qual, contact Stephen Cribbett by emailing stephen@dubishere.com or calling +44 (0) 20 7247 3327 or Kerry Hecht in the US on +1 310 997 5779

Recently, Dub has completed a new ‘Recruitment Pack’ available to clients within IdeaStream. This pack contains useful information to help researchers get the most from their recruitment partners ahead of an online qual project or research community (MROC). We thought it would be good to share some of the thoughts and insights we have picked up over the years.

If we go back four years, to when Dub started, recruiters and fieldworkers were somewhat new to online qualitative research. Many recruitment agencies, while happy to support online research projects, did not have clearly defined processes. This presented problems, most common of which was the simply not gathering correct email addresses at the point of recruitment. A basic spelling mistake at that stage could result in days of lost research.

Over time, things have improved. Many of the more progressive recruiters now have defined protocols for testing email addresses and ensuring minimum competencies are achieved. However, Dub has found that all too often, the relationship between recruiter and researcher stops at the point of passing over the list of email addresses. This leaves researchers with the role of ensuring suitable numbers of participants sign up – something that really should be the responsibility of the professional recruitment agency.

To this affect, Dub has updated the IdeaStream research platform so it’s now possible to allow ‘recruiters’ to log in and have access to certain areas. This allows researchers to offload the responsibility of making sure participants sign-up, login and get started. Not only does this ensure our clients get full value for money from their suppliers, it also means they can focus on their core skill sets – moderation, analysis and reporting.

Below is an abbreviated breakdown of the guide ‘Getting the most out of your recruiter’. This is included in the recruitment pack.

1: Pre-launch

• Make sure you send your recruiter a ‘recruitment criteria’ document. This should cover basic digital-user competencies and hardware / software requirements
• Make sure you agree ‘sign-up’ and ‘completion’ goals with your recruitment partners.
• In addition, look to lay out roles and responsibilities for managing participants once your community has launched
• If you are supplied with an incorrect email address for a participant, you can easily loose a day or more of research. Talk to your recruitment partner and look to understand what process they use to verify email addresses
• Take advantage of the ‘recruiter’ role on the IdeaStream platform. This allows your recruiters to see who has and has not signed up. It a lose allows them to see how many tasks each participants has posted to

2: During the project

• Make sure your recruitment partners log in on a regular basis to monitor the sign-up rates of your participants.
• Ensure that the goals and responsibilities are adhered to
• Give your recruiters any launch documentation you send out to your participants. This allows them to get participants, whose details may have been incorrectly submitted, up and running without your intervention