Chapter 5

Projective Technique

An indirect means of questioning enabling respondents to project beliefs and feelings onto a third party, an inanimate object, or a task situation.

Conversations

An informal data-gathering approach in which the researcher engages a respondent in a discussion of the relevant subject matter.

Focus Group Interview

An unstructured, free-flowing interview with a small group of people, usually between six and ten.

Hermeneutics

Approach to understanding phenomenology that relies on analysis of texts in which a person tells a story about him/herself.

Subjective

Different researchers may reach different conclusions based on the same data.

Themes

Identified by the frequency with which the same term arises in the narrative description.

Discussion Guide

Includes written introductory comments informing the group about the focus group purpose and rules and then outlines topics or questions to be asked in the group session.

Probing

Interview technique that tries to draw deeper and more elaborate explanations from a respondent.

Qualitative Data

Involve textual, visual, or oral information.

Piggyback

One respondent stimulates thought among the others and, as this process continues, increasingly creative insights are possible.

Concept Testing

A frequently performed type of exploratory research representing many similar research procedures all having the same purpose: to screen new, revised, or repositioned ideas.

Word Cloud

A graphical depiction of the frequency with which words occur.

Depth Interview

A one-to-one interview between a professional researcher and a research respondent.

Laddering

A term used for particular approach to probing, asking respondents to compare differences between brands at different levels.

Picture Frustration

A version of the TAT uses a cartoon drawing in which the respondent suggests a dialogue in which the characters might engage.

Quantitative Marketing Research

Addresses research objectives through empirical assessments that involve numerical measurement and analytical approaches.

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Presents subjects with an ambiguous picture(s) in which consumers and products are the center of attention.

Free-Association Techniques

Record respondents' first (top-of-mind) cognitive reactions to some stimulus.

Case Studies

Refer to documented history of a particular person, group, organization, or event.

Online Focus Group

Refers to a qualitative research effort in which a group of individuals provides unstructured comments through some online medium.

Hermeneutic Unit

Refers to a text passage from a respondent's story that is linked with a key theme from within this story or a theme provided by the researcher.

Netnography

Refers to the application of ethnography to online phenomena.

Quantitative Data

Represent phenomena by assigning numeric values in an ordered and meaningful way.

Phenomenology

Represents a philosophical approach to studying human experiences based on the idea that human experience itself is inherently subjective and determined by the contexts in which people live.

Grounded Theory

Represents an inductive investigation in which the researcher poses questions about information provided by respondents or taken from historical records.

Ethnography

Represents ways of studying cultures through methods that involve becoming highly active within that culture.

Qualitative Marketing Research

Research that addresses marketing objectives through techniques allowing the researcher to provide elaborate interpretations of market phenomena without depending on numerical measurement.

Participant-Observation

The researcher immerses him/herself within the culture that he/she is studying and draws data from the resulting observations.

Researcher-Dependent

The researcher must extract meaning from open-ended responses, such as text from a recorded interview.

Field Notes

The researcher's descriptions of what he/she actually observes in the field.

Replicable

The same conclusion is intersubjectively certifiable - another researcher's interpretation would match.

Moderator

This person ensures that everyone gets a chance to speak as he/she facilitates the discussion.

Focus Blog

When the intention is to mine the site for business research purposes.