Ch 5

Ð Hermeneutics

An approach to understanding phenomenology that relies on analysis of texts through which a person tells a story about him/herself.

Ð Projective technique

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

Ð Qualitative data

Data that are not characterized by numeric values and instead are textual, visual, or oral; focus is on stories, visual portrayals, meaningful characterizations, interpretations, and other expressive descriptions.

Ð Discussion guide in focus group research

A focus group outline that includes written introductory comments informing the group about the focus group purpose and rules and then outlines topics or questions to be ad- dressed in the group session.

Ð 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.

Ð Word cloud

A graphical depiction of the frequency with which words occur; words occurring more frequently are shown in correspondingly large type face. Others may use the term tag cloud to refer to the same thing.

Ð Laddering

A particular approach to probing asking respondents to compare differences between brands at different levels that produces distinctions at the attribute level, the benefit level, and the value or motivation level. Laddering is based on the classical repertory grid approach

Ð Moderator

A person who leads a focus group interview and ensures that everyone gets a chance to speak and facilitates the discussion.

Ð Phenomenology

A philosophical approach to studying human experiences based on the idea that human experience itself is inherently subjective and determined by the context in which people live

Ð Piggybacking

A procedure in which one respondent stimulates thought among the others; as this process continues, increasingly creative insights are possible

Ð Thematic apprerception test (TAT)

A test that presents subjects with an ambiguous picture(s) in which consumers and products are the center of attention; the investigator asks the subject to tell what is happening in the picture(s) now and what might happen next.

Ð Focus blog

A type of informal, "continuous" focus group established as an Internet blog for the purpose of collecting qualitative data from participant comments.

Ð Free association techniques: definition and examples

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

Ð Grounded theory

Represents an inductive investigation in which the researcher poses questions about information provided by respondents or taken from historical records; the researcher asks the questions to him/herself and repeatedly questions the responses to de- rive deeper explanations.

Ð Ethnography

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

Ð Researcher dependent

Research in which the researcher must extract meaning from unstructured responses such as text from a recorded interview or a collage representing the meaning some experience

Ð Replicable

Something is intersubjectively certifiable meaning the same conclusion would be reached based on another researcher's interpretation of the research or by independently duplicating the research procedures.