the polling company, inc./WomanTrend conducts a variety of hybrid research that utilizes both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Clients often utilize hybrid research in addition to traditional qualitative or quantitative market research.
HYBRID RESEARCH
Dial Testing Sessions
Dial testing sessions provide a useful combination of qualitative and quantitative data. Similar to focus groups, but with two or three times the number of participants, dial testing involves approximately 20-40 people to view advertisements, statements, and topic ideas, and provide instantaneous, quantifiable feedback and opinion.
Viewers watch the material uninterrupted and are asked to focus their attention primarily on manipulating the dial pad in response to what they were watching, bit by bit.
Handheld wireless dials allow participants to record their responses (positive and negative) by manipulating the dial to reflect their moment-to-moment reactions to a television program or series of advertisements.
The aggregate responses are then transposed onto a television monitor in the client viewing area, which displays the results both graphically and statistically. These sessions are generally followed by a discussion that yields a more extensive feedback relating to participants’ impressions and opinions of what they had previously viewed.
A “cardiogram” visual analysis of the program then highlights what viewers enjoyed the most and the areas they did not find as favorable. A scale of 1-100 is used, with cross tab analysis chosen by the client.
IRT Sessions
IRT technology sessions offer an ideal mix of quantitative data and qualitative reaction to the type of stimuli provided by a television program or series of advertisements. It allows participants to manually respond to questions posed by a professionally trained moderator and key pad technician in a confidential and discrete manner.
IRT technology simultaneously records hard numbers along with anecdotal information to precise questions in a manner that is not always duplicable through either a focus group exercise or a dial manipulation.
Equipped with wireless keypads, respondents are asked to answer a series of questions shown on a television monitor on a scaled spectrum of responses, e.g., “one to ten,” “strongly/somewhat agree/disagree.” The overall data are then automatically and instantaneously tabulated after the expiration of the 30 seconds participants are granted to enter their responses.
If more than one response is entered at a given time, the last answer entered is then eliminated, guaranteeing that only one answer is registered per respondent. The solicited responses are then instantly displayed on a television monitor in the client viewing room with customized background during audience voting and on-demand cross-reference evaluations.