In 2013, Nike released a women’s fashion line based on Pacific Islander tattoos . The line consisted of jump suits, singlets, and sports bras. Each item displayed attractive, ornate designs referencing traditional Samoan patterns . Each design attempted to pay homage to its source, but a lack of research turned a cultural tribute into a media nightmare.1
Man with traditional pe’a (tattoo )5
Nike experienced its own brand of discomfort with pe’a and malu. When the company designed its women’s tech gear, it chose a gorgeous arrangement of one of the two traditional styles. The problem for Nike was that it chose the wrong one. It placed the men’s pattern on the women’s clothing. A simple choice created a complex problem. Though Nike’s intentions were perhaps good , the choice angered Pacific Islanders . The cultural faux pas generated condemnations of Nike’s cultural insensitivity. Within weeks, Nike had pulled the entire line from store shelves and retreated with a heartfelt apology.
Groups of people tend to share similar patterns. Polynesians may originate from the same island communities, adorn themselves with the same traditional tattoos, and undergo the same painful processes. Some patterns delight whereas others offend. We discover these patterns through research.
Every population has its own patterns. Tipping in United States. Eating with your right hand in Oman. Refusing a gift three times in China . Patterns unite people.
Yet, each person is an individual, experiencing the world in his or her own unique way. When we study individuals, our view is framed by their lives alone. You may enjoy vacations at a high-priced Hawaiian resort, drink Cristal champagne, and quote Nietzsche. Your neighbor may relax on his camo-patterned La-Z-Boy recliner, swig Coors Light, and read trashy romance novels. We study the qualities of such data—the qualitative.
Because we study a small population of people, the resulting data may not represent anything more than the individuals we study. You may enjoy vacations at high-priced Hawaiian resorts, but that does not mean everyone sharing your gender, age, nationality , income, or profession does. No, instead, qualitative research dives deep into an individual’s culture, history, and behaviors. We discover questions we had never thought to ask.
Discovering Questions
Qualitative research uncovers the culture, history, and behaviors of a population. Culture need not be that of an entire society; it may be limited to a profession, organization, or family. History need not cover an entire era; it may be restricted to a few months, weeks, or days. Behavior need not include all activity; it may simply be a workflow, function, or gesture.
Consider hospital nurses . Imagine the life of a nurse working in Brookville, New York. Brookville has one of the highest average net worth of any town in America, averaging around 1.8 million dollars.6 Fewer than 900 households fill its four square miles. The town served as inspiration for the fictional town of West Egg, the setting of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book, The Great Gatsby. What type of cases does a nurse in Brookville treat? Is she witnessing premature births by teen mothers, or the ravages of methamphetamine abuse? Not likely.
Now, imagine the life of a nurse working in Allen , South Dakota. With a median household income of less than $14,000,7 the citizens of Allen face hardships many of us would find difficult to imagine. A thousand miles from the nearest coastline, the town sits within the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It has the highest poverty rate in the United States. What type of challenges does a nurse in Allen contend with during her rotation? Not the same as those experienced by a nurse in Brookville.
To understand a population, we could further explore statistics such as marital status, educational attainment, and social media use. You can find a wealth of such data on the web, including the U.S. Census, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Pew Research Center. However, statistics only imply what it is like to be a nurse . It tells us nothing about nurses’ daily lives as they experience the joys of birth, the sorrows of death, and the drudgeries of paperwork—along with the many winks, tears, and eye-rolls.
Groups of people are rarely homogenous, but they do tend to share at least a few commonalities . Nurses may share similar joys and struggles. Tattooed Polynesians may share the same traditional patterns. But to fully understand people, we must observe.
Contextual Inquiry
In her book, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee wrote: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
I imagine you reading this book. As most people tend to sit while reading, I picture you sitting in a chair. As most people tend to read in a well-lit room, I picture you reading next to a lamp. As most people tend to live in a family household,8 I picture you living with others. As most people tend to own a pet,9 I picture you reading next to a dog or cat.
Statistically speaking, my assumptions are defendable. The majority of American adults reading a book likely do so while sitting in lit rooms in proximity to both their families and pets. Though this information may illuminate some of your attributes, it certainly does not tell me much about your life. You are not a pie chart.
Perhaps you are reading this book while running on a treadmill. Perhaps you are reading this book on an e-reader sitting in a dark room. Perhaps you are reading this book to relax after taking care of an aging parent. Perhaps you are reading this book as your helper monkey gets you a beer. These qualities may have a statistical reference: we could find the number of households with pet spider monkeys, aging parents, e-readers, and gym memberships. The question is: would you even think of doing so, unless you observed it in person?
Contextual inquiry is an ethnographic method by which we observe and interview people within their own environments: homes, offices, coffee houses, churches, soccer fields, plane cockpits, and the like. We witness their joys and pains. Through this observance, we discover the hidden attributes and behaviors of an audience: qualities that we would not even think of researching until we observed them firsthand.
Years ago, I helped a client design a customer call center application. The application provided customer service representatives (CSRs) a means to quickly retrieve product information. The CSRs worked within a huge hangar-sized facility. The building’s high ceilings reached 30 feet at the center and sloped to exterior walls dotted with vending stations and small conference rooms . Rows of waist-high cubicles ran from one side of the massive building to the other like long lines of dominos. Each cubicle—no more than a few feet wide—contained a monitor, computer, keyboard, and a headset. A central computer routed calls to available CSRs. Upon receiving a call, a CSR would walk a customer through a series of scripted questions leading to a product offer.
A CSR would read aloud from his or her computer screen based on the customer’s responses to the scripted questions. “Yes” answers directed the script along one path; “no” answers diverted the script to another.
Hi, thanks for reading this book. I appreciate it.
Hi, again. Reading from this distance is hard. Isn’t it?
I did not realize that CSRs moved away from their computer screens until I saw it myself. After a few hours in a chair, people would put up their feet on their desks. Nobody mentioned it during related surveys or interviews. Doing so was natural and unremarkable. The behavior had to be observed .
In this particular case, the observation that CSRs slowly move away from their computer screens led to a considerable increase of on-screen text sizes. Rather than struggle to read the text , CSRs could now move to any position they wished. They put up their feet, sat back, and read at their leisure. I hope you are doing the same.
Interviews
Inspector Clouseau: Does your dog bite?
Hotel attendant: No.
(Dog then bites Inspector Clouseau.)
Inspector Clouseau: I thought you said your dog did not bite!
Hotel attendant: That is not my dog .
Interviews are funny. Not necessarily funny in the same way as this quote from the 1976 film The Pink Panther Strikes Again,10 but funny nonetheless. They are unwieldy exchanges between two people, full of potential insights, surprises, biases, and fears.
“What do you think of ACME’s website?” we ask. The interviewee replies, “It’s fantastic!” If we were to end there, we might assume the website is perfect. Project complete. But, if we were to follow up with, “Is there anything you would change with this application? If so, what would it be?” an interviewee might say anything from, “Yes, I’d change this period to a comma” to “Yes, I’d change your entire business model .” A follow-up question is worth a dozen one-offs. People are wonderfully unpredictable, as they go from rational beliefs to surprising absurdities.
All interviews begin with a single question. Yet, it can be almost anything. How does one become a police inspector? What was it like to steal the largest diamond in the world? Whether researching products or interrogating suspects, a question is your most powerful research tool. However, for a question to be effective , it must be open-ended and dispassionate.
Open-Ended Questions
If I were to ask you where you were born , you would likely reply with a city name . However, if I asked you to tell me about where you were born, you might say a lot more. The first question was closed-ended, the second was open-ended.
Closed-ended:
“Where were you born?”
“Orgelet.”
Open-ended:
“Tell me about where you were born.”
“Orgelet is a town on the western coast of France . We have a marathon each year. Lots of drunk people show up for it.”
Rather than ask yes/no questions , pose open-ended questions that start with “Tell me,” “Describe,” or “Explain.”
Leading Questions
Do you think this website performs poorly?
You may feel that a website performs poorly, but asking such a question prejudices a response . The phrasing would lead the respondent to think the website is performing poorly, potentially skewing her or his answer toward the negative. Likewise, if you ask whether the website performs well, it may skew an answer toward the positive.
What are your thoughts about this website?
This question removes our bias. The question does not reveal our impressions of the website. Respondents reply with their answers, not yours.
How would you improve this application?
Is there anything you would change with this application? If so, what would it be?
By rephrasing “improve” to “change,” we eliminate the implied judgment contained within the question . However, we still imply that something may need to be changed. This is usually okay, as the follow-up question gives the respondent a way out: he or she can reply “No” to the first question, thereby skipping the second.
Loaded Questions
What activities to you enjoy doing most while using a tablet device?
Respondents may not enjoy using a tablet device at all. Perhaps they do not even own one. Our biases may steer us to believe that most people own and enjoy using tablets, but you need not look far beyond your own socioeconomic bubble to find exceptions . Ask someone making less than $30K per year and living in a retirement home. According to Pew Research Center, tablet ownership tends to dip considerably in such populations.11
Interviewees are often humble, occasionally entertaining, sometimes snarky, and rarely hostile. (But it happens.) We must tread careful when it comes to the language we use. Emotionally charged terminology skews responses and risks turning an interview into a debate. One person’s euphemism is another person’s insult. Pro-life. Freedom fighter. Sissy. Illegal immigrant. Regime change. Flyover state . Secretary . Victim. Crippled. Crazy. Senile. Reject. Junkie. Did your heart race upon hearing a few of these? So too will your interviewees’ if you use emotionally charged language. Best to keep things conversational, or learn to use a defibrillator .
Silence
Interviewees are protagonists in their own stories, and their stories are told in the first person. The only knowledge they possess is their own. Interviewees are not omniscient. They want to appear helpful and smart, and sometimes to avoid looking stupid, they stop talking.
Dead air. Pregnant pauses. Non sequiturs. Although such moments may feel awkward, silences lead to goldmines of information. Pauses allow interviewees to collect their thoughts, even if for only a few seconds. Out of courtesy, interviewers may be tempted to fill in moments of quiet. However, we should wait for a response . As interviewees grow more comfortable with our questions, the pauses in between allow them to digress into other topics. A question about paying a hotel bill leads to answers about room service. A question about dog food leads to answers about leash laws. Whatever the topic, an interviewee’s potential insights are magnitudes greater than any list of questions we might prepare. We ask questions not only to elicit answers, but to also uncover questions we never thought to ask.
False Data
On average, people lie three times during a 10-minute conversation.12 Our deceptions are usually unconscious: we skew our answers to make ourselves look good in someone else’s eyes, as well as in our own. If you ask an interviewee, “How many times a week do you exercise?” You will receive an answer, but it may be more aspirational than factual . Asking a person how many times they exercise per week is a direct question. Direct questions are quick but the answers may be unreliable.
The alternative to asking a direct question is, unsurprisingly, to ask an indirect question. Using our previous example, we wish to uncover the number of times the interviewee exercises per week . Rather than ask the question directly, we instead say to the interviewee, “Please explain your typical week.” The interviewee tells us she exercises after dropping of her kids for their piano practice on Tuesdays. She adds, “I try to exercise every Saturday, too.” In conclusion , the interview indicated that she exercises twice a week.
Occasionally an interviewee may anticipate your line of inquiry and give intentionally false information. For example, asking employees about how their accounting software performs may imply their manager is debating changing it. In an effort to support the presumed change , an employee might skew his evaluation of the software’s performance downward. You could watch for the telltale signs of deception , such as maintaining too much eye contact, sitting in a frozen posture, and changing contractions into two separate words, or you could simply ask an indirect question, as follows:
You ask, “How do you calculate profit and loss?”
“Oh, I hit this button here” he replies.
“Is there anything you would change about this process ?” you ask.
“Hmm… I don’t think it could be improved—it’s super easy” he replies.
Asking indirect questions is more time-consuming than direct questions , but you will find the answers far more straightforward.
Group Interviews
When interviewing multiple people, you indirectly receive a wealth of information by asking one interviewee about another. This technique works in both individual and group interview settings. In individual interviews, your last question might be, “I’m meeting with Sally Salesperson after you. Anything I should ask her?” I have learned that interviewees were getting married soon, resigning the next day, skeptical of their upcoming interviews (always good to know in advance), and have been warned that an interviewee had “the gift of the gab .” In group interviews, posing questions about fellow interviewees can be a good conversational accelerant. “Bob, you send Steve customer order information. How does that work?” Having Steve in the room to hear Bob’s response may lead to agreements or challenges. Both are good . But keep in mind that some participates will dominate a group discussion. Try to interview participants individually as well.
The Five Whys
- 1.
You: Why do you want to create an iPhone app for hotel attendants?
Interviewee: Because hotel attendants need a quick way to summon a bellhop.
- 2.
You: Why summon a bellhop?
Interviewee: Because bellhops carry guests’ bags to their rooms.
- 3.
You: Why do bellhops carry guests’ bags to their rooms ?
Interviewee : Because we want to show courtesy to our guests.
- 4.
You: Why show courtesy to your guests?
Interviewee: Because courtesy is this hotel’s unique offering.
- 5.
You: Why is courtesy the hotel’s unique offering ?
Interviewee: Because we are more expensive than our competition, so we compete by providing better service.
Starting with one simple “why,” we were able to generate four additional questions , eventually getting to the heart of an issue. Could we have discovered this information another way? Certainly. However, the “five whys” uncover an interviewee’s underlying assumptions and motivations . Interviewees will freely tell you what they believe. We must discover why they believe it. Without such understanding, we can only guess the reasons.
Key Takeaways
Qualitative research provides the “why” about a phenomenon.
Small sample sizes may not be representative of an entire population .
We run contextual inquiries to observe people within their own environments.
Effective qualitative research questions are open-ended and dispassionate.
Open-ended questions start with phrases such as “Tell me,” “Describe,” or “Explain.”
Leading questions prejudice a response and compromise research efforts.
Coercive questions and emotionally charged language skew responses and risk turning an interview into a debate.
Silent pauses allow interviewees to collect their thoughts and digress into additional topics.
The “five whys” technique uncovers answers through the repetition of a single question: why?
Questions to Ask Yourself
What patterns are shared amongst a population?
How can I change a closed-ended question into an open-ended one?
How can I observe participants in their own environments?
Am I asking participants any leading questions ?
Do the questions I ask participants contain opinions or value judgments?
Am I asking questions in a dispassionate or coercive way?
Do any of my questions contain emotionally charged language?
Am I adequately pausing after each question?
Am I inadvertently filling in silences during an interview ?
Does an interview contain a mix of direct and indirect questions ?
What can I learn about research participants from one another?