Hello and welcome to this course on qualitative market research.
I am Susan Berman,
and I'll be your instructor for this course.
I am president of ImpactResearch which is a full service market research firm,
specializing in qualitative and quantitative research,
from project initiation to completion.
I have been conducting
both qualitative and quantitative research studies for about 30 years.
I hold a master's degree in Communication Research from Stanford University,
and have worked on a variety of projects that span different industries including music,
film, television, food, healthcare, government and more.
Now I want you to think about the word qualitative.
What comes to your mind?
Quality? How would you describe the word quality?
Some words that come to mind include detail,
precision, insight and in-depth features.
So let's think about describing the quality of something important to you.
The first thing that comes to my mind,
is my Labrador Cosmo.
Isn't he adorable?
So what are his qualities? Let's see.
Cosmo was kind, beautiful,
obedient, funny, and of course loyal.
Okay. There. I've given you
an in-depth peek that goes beneath the general idea of my dog.
With qualitative research you will be discovering
in-depth information about whatever topic you study.
Don't worry if you know little to nothing about a topic.
Actually the less you know to start the better.
That's because whomever you interview,
will tell you the details that are important to them on the topic.
In this course we're going to discuss qualitative research from design,
to implementation, to analysis.
I have broken this course into four modules.
In this first module,
you will be able to define
qualitative research and how it differs from quantitative research.
You will be able to identify essential components of qualitative research.
You will explore the various qualitative research methods and evaluate when,
and how to use them.
And before we wrap up,
you will be able to begin
a qualitative investigation into a research project or business problem.
For the second module,
we'll start to design
the qualitative instruments necessary and plan our recruitment efforts.
You will be able to write solid questions and prompts,
to ask in the interview or focus group.
You will be able to conduct
an in-depth interview and follow a process for qualitative research.
You will be able to saturate a topic and write your questions by topics and sequences.
You will also be able to design a moderator guide,
and a screening questionnaire.
You'll be able to plan recruiting all your participants.
In the third module,
we'll finally recruit participants and conduct a focus group.
After this module, you will be able to recruit participants for a focus group.
You will be able to apply techniques to ensure they show up and participate.
You'll be able to moderate a focus group and apply
strategies to handle various types of situations.
You'll be able to probe responses and engage participants in a group discussion.
You will be able to collect qualitative data and keep the discussion moving.
Then in the final module,
you will take the data you collected and begin to organize and analyze it.
After this module, you'll be able to
transcribe the audio from your focus group or interview.
You will be able to interpret your notes and analyze the qualitative data,
by identifying themes and categories that emerged.
You will write a focus group report that can be presented to your stakeholders,
and you will see how this information might relate to your quantitative research.
Qualitative market research is about people,
their opinions, the body language,
facial expressions, the words they say and the words they don't say.
It is about being able to infer meaning from being in
a room with a person or group and reading them.
I hope you enjoy this course as much as I enjoyed developing it for you.
We have a lot to get through,
so let's get started.