Qualitative Research

Qualitative research involves gathering and analysing non-numerical data to understand a person’s social reality. Think focus groups, depth interviews and ethnography. When it's done properly, qualitative research provides deep – and sometimes profound – insight into a person’s perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, and motivations. Even today, with the arrival of ‘big data’ and AI analytics, qualitative research remains one of the most powerful tools for understanding your customers so you can better attune your products to their needs. 

At Ground Truth, we’ve been conducting qualitative research for over 17 years. Over this time, we’ve developed a clear philosophy which guides our practice:

• Real-world data collection. We look for data where life happens, where decisions are made and acted on. Focus groups are great, but sometimes we need to get inside people’s homes, cars, places of work or even their digital environments to see what’s really going on. We routinely ask ourselves what heuristics might be driving a wedge between claimed and actual behaviour.

• Dispassionate. Even the potentially most competent researchers will succumb to their own biases or create an artificially tidy story when debriefing the research findings. We are wary of these pitfalls and hold ourselves to an especially high standard. Our diverse team organises and listens to our data carefully. 

• Finding the right people. Good research starts with the recruitment of the right research participants. We take this step seriously. Where necessary, we go beyond traditional recruitment methods to source appropriate people for your study. 

While quantitative research (such as the collection of survey data) gives you the raw numbers to recognise and begin examining a marketing problem, qualitative research is employed to provide depth of insight. It is the story behind the numbers, helping you understand complex phenomena for which a numerical analysis would be too crude an instrument. In other words, quantitative research can answer questions like ‘how many?’ or ‘how often?’, while qualitative research answers questions like ‘why?’ or ‘how?’.

When most people think of qualitative research, they are likely to think of focus groups or depth interviews. But today the range of qualitative research techniques and analysis instruments (think AI-enabled thematic analysis) is much wider. 

Here are a few ‘non-traditional’ methodologies we have used recently for our clients:

• Design research workshops. We’ve facilitated workshops which brought product designers and customers into the same conversation with the purpose of co-designing a new electric four-wheel drive. 

• Scalable qualitative research. We’ve tested the performance of advertising material with hundreds of customers in a single 90-minute session using an exciting new AI tool that scans video blog input to identify key themes. 

• Digital observation. For an online shopping study, we had respondents install an app on their smartphone to track their usage of online shopping sites for a two-week period. The research culminated in a depth interview where respondents were ‘confronted’ with their tracking data. Together (researcher and respondent) we tried to make sense of their online journeys.

Qualitative projects are usually bespoke, one-off research programs designed to answer a specific set of questions. Every time we receive a new brief, we first work with clients to develop a thorough understanding of what they want to achieve. We then design a methodology. 

While every project is different, broadly speaking… 

1. Research brief issued: Most of our existing clients will write a detailed brief outlining their research needs. In some cases, we co-author the brief with our clients to help them identify precisely what they wish to know. 

2. Research proposal issued: We will issue a formal response to the brief in the form of a proposal detailing the methodology, design, sample structure and costs.

3. Recruitment: Ground Truth will write a recruitment screener that sets out who we will invite to the research. Once approved by the client, we will utilise our network of professional recruiters to find the right people.

4. Fieldwork: This is the period of data collection (i.e., when the focus groups, interviews or ethnography will be held). Depending on the scope and style of the research this can take anywhere from one day to several weeks or months.

5. Analysis: We will rigorously analyse the information respondents shared with us to identify themes, implications and opportunities.

6. Debrief: We will write a comprehensive insights report with our findings and present them back to you.