Tips for successful field research

In my experience “Nothing replaces the power of direct observation”. Business strategists, product and service designers, can gain several insights from watching people in their actual work environment and capturing a user’s latent/unspoken needs. The way that you conduct your field research will have a significant impact on the quality of the results. Below are the key points from my experience, to remember when conducting your research and interpreting your results. Ask the right questions If your questions are incorrectly phrased then they may produce misleading results. Avoid close ended questions which encourage the answer “yes” or “no”. For example – A company that asks customers if they intend to install an HRMS solution in the next year will find out just that – but they won’t discover “why” the customer is planning to install an HRMS solution, For example – Installing an HRMS solution automates the HR activities or improves the performance management process. Talk to the right people For example – If you are trying to garner how much HR spends on automation, and if you interview any HR employee in the company, this may not be the right representative of your market. Instead one needs to target employees who are decision makers in HR functions such as HR Heads, HR Director or a Sr. Manager HR. Therefore when drawing up the list of people to talk to, one needs to consi der the profile of respondents carefully including seniority and job profile/role. Talk to enough people A survey, for example, of two people won’t get you enough information. Consider the right representative of the population in order to get a complete picture. Statistical sampling is a science that takes into account the diversity of the population. For a homogeneous/uniform sample, for instance, a sample of 385 is the largest needed no matter if the population is 500,000 or 500,000,000,000 for 95% confidence and 5% error. One could use a sample size calculator to arrive at an accurate sample size. Certainly, you can increase the sample size and enhance the accuracy and confidence level, however, this change increases both cost and time spent and the decision needs to be arrived based on the requirement and depth of detail expected from the findings.

Keep research impartial It’s easy to encourage people to give the answer you want. For example, by asking leading questions or smiling at the ‘right’ answer. Discussions, where you’re not referring from a list of set questions, are particularly easy to distort. And in a focus group, individuals with strong opinions may influence the views of others. Interpret results with care You need to make sure you draw the right conclusions from your research. Be observant that people may distort the answers which will displace objective of the interview. For example, they might say they would be interested in a product “if the price was lower”. Qualitative research – where you’re investigating feelings and attitudes – can be particularly difficult to interpret. However, qualitative research is quite helpful to understand the pulse of the customer. For ex. if a researcher needs to understand the nature of dissatisfaction among a respondent, a qualitative question can be asked to gather why the client/respondent was dissatisfied. One of the ways to interpret a qualitative data is by identifying a trend or a pattern in the responses provided by sample population. It is also useful to capture the sentiment which cannot really be quantified. Be realistic It can be tempting to pick out results that confirm what you want to hear, and ignore the rest. But ignoring negative results could damage your research. Be prepared to modify your plans if necessary. Will share more on sampling and other techniques of research in the subsequent articles. Also see more info @ http://www.prayag.com