Multi-country qualitative projects are some of the most challenging for researchers and clients alike. Significant logistical and cost issues associated with travel often result in small sample sizes in each country, making it hard to find common themes. Multiple languages, translation, and overlaying the local cultural context is also difficult. These issues simply don’t exist in single country studies.
For these reasons, it has always been a struggle to find a practical and methodologically robust solution for multi-country qual.
The latest technological advancements utilising video capture, analysis algorithms, and the use of AI offer a genuine breakthrough.
The challenges of traditional approaches
Historically, one of three options have been used to navigate multi-country projects:
Sending a trusted moderator to every country is pretty typical, as this helps ensure a consistent point of view during the analysis, but is expensive with travel costs eating into the budget. Extensive fieldwork time is also an issue as the moderator travels from country to country. The need to have a native-speaking moderator and simultaneous translation in each location adds to the cumbersome nature of the approach. Video streaming from a central location, and associated room hire costs, is also required if the client wants to be a part of the process which, of course, they should be.
The second option is to subcontract local teams or use a global research provider’s local office to run each country. This reduces the travel costs but raises the spectre of different moderator-biases as each country is run by a different team. It also means the analysis requires a ‘coming together’ of all moderators to run a joint analysis properly. Imagine five or more qualies from five different countries all debating results from their own cultural perspective. Not easy. Or worse, a pencil and paper check-sheet completed by each moderator to simply ‘fill-in the key findings’. Overly simplistic analysis in the extreme.
A third option is to use online qualitative to circumvent some of these issues. Travel costs are saved, but the pros and cons of online qual vs face-to-face are well known, also adding in the challenges of online tech in some less developed markets. And with multi-country studies, the multi-lingual challenge compounds many of the issues.
An agile solution
Agile qualitative solutions using the latest video capture, analysis, and editing platforms now offer a great alternative when handling multi-country projects, addressing spiralling costs, the lengthy fieldwork time and multi-lingual challenges, and aid with the analysis of the local context.
Because the latest platforms are multi-lingual, video offers an efficient alternative for multi-country studies. Respondents can record in their native language which is then transcribed and translated into English. Subtitles are added and analysis are done in one language, usually English, saving on the need for local moderators and a simultaneous translator in every market.
Because videos can be captured in-home or in any other environment specified by the researcher, the technology also provides invaluable contextual data not generated from a central group room facility. In-the-moment video is much more powerful and insightful than watching people in an austere central location. In a group situation people may forget to tell you about other brands in the kitchen cupboard, or selectively summarise their usage behaviour when asked to recall it, but the video captures every brand in the cupboard and all the behavioural nuances.
In-depth responses can be captured from much larger sample sizes than is typical with face to face studies more efficiently and cost-effectively. So rather than being limited by tiny qual samples in each country because travel has used up most of the budget, video technology allows the budget to be focussed on generating more robust samples with a correspondingly enhanced appreciation of intra-country nuances and a greater level of insight.
Concepts are evaluated by each respondent individually and advertisements are viewed alone, which is often closer to real-world exposure, removing any ‘group-think’ or moderator-bias for more authentic results.
As each country and all respondents can be run concurrently fieldwork time is slashed, a crucial point when so many qual projects are on a time-critical path for the marketing team, such as with a new product launch or ad testing. Results delivered in days rather than months means consumer feedback can be included at every step of the process and research can support key decisions at the speed of the business.
How it works
Video platforms utilise AI and algorithms to help drive the analysis. Using text analytics gives qualitative an almost quant-like overlay. This not only helps the researcher find the patterns across multiple countries, it means the client can also see the themes creating a common understanding and removing some of the mystique which shrouds qual analysis.
Video questions can be pre-set to launch at a specific time or in a particular sequence. Not quite on the same level as a trained moderator probing and teasing out answers but at a fraction of the cost and a hundred times the speed, some things are worth trading-off.
Of course, video has its limitations. A highly skilled moderator who can probe a particular response or tease out more depth can’t be replaced with a sequence of pre-set video questions. But given the time and cost savings there are many projects that are a great fit for unmoderated qual, saving budget for those larger studies that do require that in-depth probing.
Automation and research expertise
Expertise in qualitative analysis will always be needed to interpret the videos and set the answers in the context of the brand and business objectives. The technology only provides the first cut of the analysis, speeding up the process and giving the researcher more thinking time. More time spent on higher order interpretation rather than just organising data and structuring the overall themes is a great shift for the researcher.
The technology can’t replace a skilled qual researcher when it comes to question phrasing, higher level analysis, and interpretation. However, as a new and fast evolving tool in the armoury, agile video does solve many of the issues clients face with multi-country qual projects – a breakthrough already being embraced by many clients and researchers.
Five top tips to optimise multi-country video qual
- Include the video company in the planning stage – they are the experts in video as you are in qual.
- Consider how to include some contextual video – this adds richness.
- When is the best time to record the video – the tech is agile so in the moment is optimal.
- Ask for advice on shaping your questions – video questions are both art and science, and differ to standard qual questions and video companies have good learnings here.
- Expand your qual sample – scale your project to include more people per country because video is so cost-effective.
