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ProTip: Put Respondents in the Driver’s Seat

By crooky | January 16, 2008

Yesterday, I had coffee with Andrew Robulack (my new friend from Bad Robot in Whitehorse) and we were discussing his company and what they’re planning on doing. Besides single-handedly turning Whitehorse into the jewel-encrusted high tech hub for the North, Andrew has plans to develop a new media platform for mobile phones that will allow organizations to target cell-phone toting youth with marketing materials or public service announcements. The twist on Andrew’s approach is the use of narrative to engage young people. I was excited by this idea and in the process of getting visibly excited/agitated about the concept, we started talking about what happens when you try to get feedback from youth when you pitch this narrative to them. We both arrived at the conclusion that it’s exceedingly difficult to phrase a question so that every respondent answers it with the same context in mind. One approach is to get individuals to frame the the dialogue for themselves and then ask them a pointed question about their self-written dialogue to quantify their qualitative input.

I first heard of this udea in a round-about way from Dave Snowden at Cognitive Edge. David, if you ever read this, I’m sorry if I misinterpreted your idea but my interpretation works. I won’t quote you. When I met David, I was working at BC Hydro in the Stakeholder Engagement department and we were looking for innovative ways to garner feedback from our stakeholders. David was suggesting that we set a loose framework such as “we’re going to talk about building new dams in your community” and then invite dialogue in a structured way from the community.

For example, you might say

tell us about a time that you were angry with the government and how did they respond

then you give them an opportunity to write their thoughts and feelings down or record a video message. Once they’ve vented, you hit them with a quantifiable question such as

thinking about the last time you were angry with the government, please rate their response: .

That way, you’re letting people who are used to creating content write the narrative while you set the agenda. It’s both structured and organic - neither forcing the respondent into your best attempt at guessing “where they are coming from” yet keeping the dialogue on topic.

I was suggesting to Andrew that if his SMS-based messaging service targeting youth also gave them the opportunity to feed their dialogue back to his clients and then frame their input around some quantitative questions, it would be an invaluable tool for government and non-profit organizations that are always looking for ways to connect with youth (especially aboriginal youth).

The moral of the story is that there are limitations to your imagination and there is no way that you alone will be able to devise the perfect survey. Only your respondents can do that and as long as you’re prepared to deal with hundreds of personalized surveys with a theme, using David Snowden’s approach could be a winning proposal.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

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Topics: Research Methodologies |

3 Responses to “ProTip: Put Respondents in the Driver’s Seat”

  1. Dave Snowden Says:
    January 16th, 2008 at 9:15 am

    It is a fair summary of the approach Aaron, although the software to capture and interpret the material (SenseMaker) has involved considerable investment over the years. If your friend is interested he can learn more at the various accreditation courses we run or from a qualified practitioner - details on the web site. The next North American course in is Washington DC next week

  2. Michael Cheveldave Says:
    January 16th, 2008 at 11:08 am

    Hi Aaron, I have completed several projects with SenseMaker both in the public and private sectors here in BC. Some very interesting results when you allow a context to set the basis for asking some direct questions. The narrative elicitation question design is important in terms of ambiguity and resonance however the direct question set design is perhaps even more critical. The visualization possibilities offered through SenseMaker give you a novel way of identifying emergent patterns and allows one to make sense of complex situations much more effectively.

    Recently I was helping a colleague in the Netherlands with a narrative project looking into social behaviours and attitudes related to alcohol and driving.

    If your interested in this area of work perhaps we can schedule a call to connect by phone.

  3. Aaron Cruikshank Says:
    January 17th, 2008 at 6:53 am

    Hi Dave,

    Thanks for the feedback. I didn’t mean to make it sound like you guys didn’t have some brilliant intellectual property around this - you do. I was actually pissed off the first time I saw your presentation because I was planning on doing my PhD on this topic and you beat me to it. Hahaha! Oh well.

    Michael, I’ll look you up and drop you a line soon.

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