Chapter 5

Hermeneutics

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

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 qualitative 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 around six to ten people. Focus groups are led by a trained moderator who follows a flexible format encouraging dialogue among respondents.

Participant-Observation

Ethnographic research approach where the researcher becomes immersed within the culture that he or she is studying and draws data from his or her observations.

Themes

Identified by the frequency with which the same term (or a synonym) arises in the narrative description.

Probing

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

Discussion Guide

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 addressed in the group session.

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.

Depth Interview

A one-on-one interview between a professional researcher and a research respondent conducted about some relevant business or social topic.

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.

Moderator

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

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.

Piggyback

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

Online Focus Group

A qualitative research effort in which a group of individuals provides unstructured comments by entering their remarks into an electronic internet display board of some type.

Thematic Apperception 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.

Focus Blog

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

Picture Frustration

A version of the TAT using 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 statistical analysis.

Free-association Techniques

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

Hermeneutic Unit

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

Quantitative Data

Represent phenomena by assigning numbers in an ordered and meaningful way.

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-or herself and repeatedly questions the responses to derive deeper explanations.

Ethnography

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

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 of some experience.

Qualitative Marketing Research

Research that addresses marketing objectives through techniques that allow the researcher to provide elaborate interpretations of market phenomena without depending on numerical measurement; its focus is on discovering new insights and true inner meanings.

Subjective Results

Researcher-dependent results meaning different researchers may reach different interpretations about the same piece of data such as a focus group comment.

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.

Netnography

The application of ethnography to comments made in online communities.

Case Studies

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

Field Notes

The researcher's descriptions of what he/she actually observes in the field, these notes then become the text from which meaning is extracted.

Qualitative Data

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