|
|
Projective techniques (Qualitative)
Deeply held attitudes and motivations are often not verbalised
by respondents when questioned directly. Respondents may
not even be aware that they hold these particular attitudes or
may feel that their motivations reflect badly on them.
Projective techniques allow respondents to project their
subjective or true opinions and beliefs onto other people or
even objects. The respondent's real feelings are then inferred
from what s/he says about others. Projective techniques are
normally used during individual or small group interviews.
They incorporate a number of different research methods.
Among the most commonly used techniques are:
- Bubble diagram. This technique enables us to gain the intimate insight into the consulting event needed. A simple cartoon of a doctor and a patient at a consultation is depicted with empty speech and thought bubbles. The respondent is asked to complete the bubbles showing what they said and thought and also what the other party said and thought. The analysis looks at discrepancies between what an individual thought and said as well as comparing the answers of doctors and patients about the same consultation event. Thus, it is possible to identify 'hidden' driving factors that result in a particular behaviour.
- Collage / Assemblage. This is a production of montage imagery using a variety of stimulus material to create a picture of the brand/ therapy area/disease
- Constructs. A construct is literally a "construction" of meaning created by the researchers to represent important thoughts and feelings among consumers.
- Gestalt. This is a version of guided fantasy that allows access to sensorial depiction of the brand. Brands are defined in terms of the 5 senses that provide powerful leads for creative campaigns
- Guided Fantasy. Regression techniques that enable us to access higher-level thought, guided by the moderator
- Historic projection. This technique will enable us to identify how doctors perceive that a market/therapy/disease will develop over and above their immediate unmet needs, which can obstruct a realistic long-term projection. The doctor is asked to describe how something has evolved from a point of time in the past, e.g. 5 or 10 years, to present day and then how it will evolve in the future. Any aspect of the disease area, e.g. treatment or diagnostic criteria can be evaluated in this manner. The future changes cited could be established in a sequential manner to understand in detail the stepwise progression of development that the doctor perceives.
- Laddering. Laddering techniques that involve the creation, reviewing, and modification of hierarchical knowledge by a respondent, often in the form of ladders (i.e. tree diagrams). Laddering can also involve a set of predefined probe questions, such as "Could you tell me some sub-types of X?", "Could you tell me how you can tell that something is X?" and "Why would you prefer X to Y?" Switching back and forth between different levels of abstraction to create ideas is known as 'laddering'. The sequence below is a 'ladder' of concepts in which the items lower down are all members or sub-sets of the ones higher up so that you move between the abstract and the concrete:
General (abstract)
 
Specific (concrete) |
The spatial concept of boundary
Methods of enclosing spaces
Containers of all sorts
Small containers
Drinking vessel
This cup is in my hand |
Use of Ladders in hierarchies with other relationships can also be used, such as composition ladders and process ladders described earlier. Validation of the knowledge represented in a ladder with another expert is often very quick and efficient.
- Metaphor Probe/Expand the Frame. In this exercise participants are asked to widen the frame of one or more selected pictures and describe what else might enter the picture that reinforces the original idea. They may also be asked to imagine themselves in the picture, to discuss what might be taking place and to discuss what they are thinking and feeling.
- Metaphorical elicitation. In this technique the aim is to uncover the patterns by looking at the shadows the patterns leave behind or reflections of these patterns on other stimulus. Our sensory-response research looks directly at the patterns that drive feelings and decisions, thus meaning that we avoid the problem of over extending the metaphor or contaminating the projection with cognitive noise.
- Missing Pictures. We also ask participants if there were important ideas they wanted to express, but for which they could not find relevant images. When this happens, the interviewer explores the kind of image that might represent those thoughts and feelings.
- Natural grouping. During the interview the doctor is asked to write the initials (or anything that uniquely identifies the individuals) of 6-10 recently consulting sufferers/patients of a disease on separate pieces of paper. The interviewer will then ask the doctors to divide these real patients into families/groupings on any criteria they choose. They may choose gender, for example, or newly consulting versus existing patient, etc. It is entirely up to the doctor to select the criteria without the interviewer's prompting. The interviewer will then establish the criteria and features relating the 'families' of patients. Moreover, the repetition of this grouping exercise, forcing the doctor to use different criteria (the doctor repeats the exercise with the same patients but cannot use the same criteria for grouping) enables us to establish all the significant means of segmenting the patient population, even those of a more sub-conscious nature. The exercise continues until the natural groupings are exhausted.
- NLP - Neuro linguistic programming. The name sounds high tech, however it is purely descriptive. Neuro refers to neurology, our nervous system. This is the mental pathway of our five senses which allows us to see, hear, feel, taste and smell. Linguistic refers to our language ability. It is how we put together words and phrases to express ourselves, as well as how our "silent language" of movement and gestures reveals our states, thinking styles and more. Programming, taken from computer science, refers to the idea that our thoughts, feelings, and actions are like computer software programs. When we change those programs, just as when we change or upgrade software, we immediately get positive changes in our performance. We get immediate improvements in the way we think, feel, act, and live.
- Personification. The simplest: If brand X were a type of car, what type of car would they be?
- Sensory (Non-Visual) Metaphors. The sensory-emotional research process is based on a theory of how we take decisions. In simple terms a stimulus that we are interested in gives rise to a response. Between the stimulus and the response, the brain matches patterns to the stimulus to determine the required response. This process happens subconsciously and leads to a range of emotional feelings that direct the final response. The cognitive part of the brain then post-rationalises the response and helps tuning the pattern matching
- Sentence completion test. In the sentence completion method, respondents are given incomplete sentences and are asked to complete the thought. These sentences are usually in the third person and tend to be somewhat ambiguous. For example, the following sentences would provide striking differences in how they were completed depending on the personality of the respondent:
- "A beach vacation is........"
- "Taking a holiday in the mountains is.."
- "Golfing is for."
- "The average person considers skiing..."
- "People who visit museums are...."
- Storytelling about Pictures. In this technique participants describe how each picture they brought to the interview represents their thoughts and feelings about "privacy." Because much of our knowledge and memory takes the form of stories, stories are excellent sources of metaphors and important sources of insight about participants. In the process of telling a story about the pictures, with occasional probing by specially trained interviewers, rich insights emerge
- The Triad Task. The interviewer asks the participant to examine three pictures selected at random by the interviewer and to indicate how any two pictures are similar, but different from the third, with regard to the topic. For example, the participant might have said that two pictures were similar because they reflect feelings about closeness, while the third picture represents protection. The interviewer probes, with "laddering" techniques, the reasons these distinctions are relevant to the participant.
- Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). In the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), the respondents are shown one or more pictures and asked to describe what is happening, what dialogue might be carried on between characters and/or how the "story" might continue. For this reason, TAT is also known as the picture interpretation technique
- Third-person techniques. The third-person technique, more than any other projective technique, is used to elicit deep seated feelings and opinions held by respondents that might be perceived as reflecting negatively upon the individual. People will often attribute "virtues" to themselves where they see "vices" in others. For instance, when asked why they might choose to go on an Alaskan cruise, the response might be because of the quality of the scenery, the opportunity to meet interesting people and to learn about a different culture. But when the same question is asked as to why a neighbour might go on such a cruise, the response could very well be because of 'brag appeal' or to show off. By providing respondents with the opportunity to talk about someone else, such as a neighbour, a relative or a friend, they can talk freely about attitudes that they would not necessarily admit to holding themselves.
- Word association test. There are a number of ways of using word association tests:
- A list of words or phrases can be presented in random order to respondents, who are requested to state or write the word or phrase that pops into their mind
- Respondents are asked for what word or phrase comes to mind immediately upon hearing certain brand names
- Similarly, respondents can be asked about slogans and what they suggest
- Respondents are asked to describe an inanimate object or product by giving it "human characteristics" or associating descriptive adjectives with it
- For example, a group of tourism professionals working on establishing a strategic marketing plan for their community were asked to come up with personality traits or "human characteristics" for the villages as well as the cities within their area:
- Villages
- Serene
- Conservative
- Quaint
- Friendly
- Accessible
- Reliable
- Cities
- Brash
- Rushed
- Liberal
- Modern
- Cold
|
|
|
|
|
