Defining Project Goals Through Questionnaire Real Estate

(part of Chapter 1: Know Your Goals)

 

It is important that everyone on a team understand the primary goals of a market research project. While getting a group of individuals to agree on priorities may be a daunting task, certain exercises such as Chartstorming™ may help you reach a consensus.

Read on to learn how to manage your questionnaire real estate through better group collaboration.

 

Managing questionnaire real estate

In MR, we sometimes talk about questionnaire real estate, or how much space with which you have to work. It’s good context to keep in mind as you write your RFP. It’s also a useful way to help your internal colleagues understand that space is limited.

Typically, you can assume that 80 percent of your instrument’s real estate is going to be dedicated to your primary objective (this is true for questionnaires and discussions guides). For example, if your primary goal is product concept testing, you can assume the following will roughly apply:

• 80 percent of your content is going to focus on the primary objective.
• 10 percent is going to be related to profiling and screening. In the case of questionnaires, there will be critical questions at the beginning and at the end of the instrument. Those at the beginning will screen people to make sure they meet your qualifications for the survey, and those at the end will capture profiling information so you can perform different types of analyses that will make the research meaningful to you.
• 10 percent might be available for additional contextual questions or secondary objectives. If there is a secondary objective to the study, you need to be clear with the agency you hire so it can plan the real estate accordingly. This also allows the agency to submit a proposal with suggestions about how to address both objectives in a meaningful way without compromising either.

 

Managing questionnaire length

There are exercises that you can do in team meetings to make sure that everybody buys into and has clarity about project goals. One exercise I do with clients is a design-your-dream-chart exercise called Chartstorming™. The comprehensive version of this exercise is useful for larger groups and otherwise complex situations. But for many cases, the simplified version described here works just as well (see table 1.2).

First, assemble a group of 3 to 10 participants and set up a whiteboard or flip chart. Then have each person brainstorm about what would happen at the end of the project if they could only get five charts. Ask them to sketch these out on paper. And, yes, only five. So they get to project themselves:

“It is the end of the project. I’ve just spent $50,000. If I only got five charts from my investment, what would they be?”

We are not looking to predict what the outcome would be, but to design and label the charts. Here are some examples of what these charts could be:

• A bar chart showing awareness of our brand by customer group.
• A chart showing propensity to pay a premium for specific features we’re considering.
• A chart showing how we compare to our competitors in terms of perceived product reliability.
• A chart showing the importance of different product attributes to our male vs. female customers.
• A perceptual map that plots our product models along the axes of “perceived reliability” and “ease of use.”

Next, nominate a facilitator to manage steps 2 and 3 as described in Table 1.2.

Obviously, many possibilities exist. Getting the team together to generate the priorities is a great way to get buy-in. It’s a useful way to get people to think very clearly and precisely about what they truly need at the end of this research project.

If you go through this process and you find that a miracle happened and everyone agrees on those five charts, that’s great! Perhaps we just designed an eight-minute survey. In reality, you likely will complete the exercise with five top picks and several secondary picks. That’s fine—at least it’s prioritized.

Another outcome is possible: sometimes at the end of this exercise, the group has defined 2 separate projects. That is a legitimate outcome. At least now we have precisely defined the needs, even if they can not be reasonably addressed in a single effort.

 

 

Table 1.2 Chartstorming™ Team Exercise
Step 1	Get 3 to 10 people to join in and sketch five charts each.
Step 2	As a group, eliminate redundant charts, and then rate each remaining chart in terms of actionability and importance using a scale from 1 to 5. For example, if Chart 12 is rated a 3 on actionability and a 4 on importance, its total is 7.
Step 3	Rank order the charts using this approach, then identify and review the top five. Discuss areas of agreement and disagreement. Agree upon next steps.

 

 

This is an excerpt from the book, "How to Hire & Manage Market Research Agencies," which is available on Amazon. Published by Research Rockstar LLC. Copyright © by Kathryn Korostoff. All rights reserved.