This second report on ESOMAR Open Community Support Circle deals with switching your research to online methodologies. Due to social distancing and (partial) lockdown implemented in most countries around the globe, face-to-face research is nearly impossible. Judith Passingham and Philippe Guilbert, in their introductory remarks, provided context and background on online methodologies for data, research and insights.
For the last two decades, we have all been part of an increasingly digitised and globalised society. The data, research and insights sector has been a part of this digitisation and globalisation trend; it has been impacted by it, it has been enriched by it and has long advocated our responsibilities to it.
Our sector is well equipped and well prepared to deal with the required shift to a nearly all-online model, and is confident in its ability to produce the required knowledge and guidance that decision-makers should and must rely on.
The introduction was followed by an animated discussion with the attendees on the call. From these discussions the following key recommendations emerged:
- Research Quality
- Your Duty of Care
- Preparing for a Fluctuating World
Research Quality
The key question when changing the methodology to online is whether the project is feasible for online data collection. Some pointers to help you determine whether this is the case are:
- Consider the internet and mobile penetration of your target audience.
- Consider the planned survey frequency and run parallel tests wherever possible.
- For fieldwork, specific quotas and criteria may be useful.
- Adapt your questionnaire and keep its look and feel attractive to keep the responder motivated.
- Check the result and responder profiles with intermediate data files and with the final result to better interpret evolution trends.
When online is not possible, you may also decide to switch to CATI at home and ensure to adapt the supervision and live control.
Regardless of the switch in methodology, always be mindful that research results can be very specific to this particular time period, due to dynamic changes caused by the pandemic. This doesn’t mean your results are wrong, but are simply a reflection of the current uncertain times we are living in. And as is always the case there is not one single way to conduct research, but we must be mindful of the country we are working in, the cultural environment and the context of the project.
Your Duty of Care
Duty of Care is one of the leading principles within the ICC/ESOMAR Code. It’s a principle that underlines our work and is vital to gain the trust of our partners to work with us. The discussion in the Community Circle led to several practical tips on how to implement this principle when switching to online research methodologies in times of COVID-19.
While most subjects can (and should!) still be researched, steer clear of questions that we think may upset or offend consumers – for example, asking people if they have underlying health conditions is currently inappropriate.
When recruiting respondents for your panel be mindful that them being at home more nowadays does not mean unsolicited calls or invitations are welcome. Therefore, try to stick with pre-recruited responders if you can. When you approach them, explain clearly the purpose of the research and its results. This will fulfil your duty of care and may also increase the response rate.
Lastly, when using online platforms for virtual meetings, you may be collecting Online IDs for which you need explicit and informed consent. You may also consider NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) and confidentiality forms for regular participants and collecting signatures digitally. This may be particularly useful when conducting product testing.
Prepare for a Fluctuating World
Every crisis acts as a catalyst for society to enter a ‘new normal’, and it will be no different this time. While we cannot predict the ‘new normal’, we can start preparing for it. It’s an important time to be conducting research and with our respect for privacy and a scientific base, we are well-placed as an industry to do this.
Even after social distancing and isolation, we must embrace various skills, collaborate with data scientists, sociologists and people with different skillsets, to better analyse the data we collect. This is the moment for us to define key elements and changes, once the world emerges from this crisis. Otherwise, if we stop research for the next few months, we risk finding ourselves behind the curve of understanding how consumer behaviour has changed in the meantime.
Through our track record of quality of research and our duty of care to our respondents and clients, we are in an excellent position to get ready for this new, post-COVID-19 world.
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