Qualitative Research: Useful in Food PR

Qualitative research is an important research method that can be advantageous to a client when in-depth information on participants' attitudes, behaviors, value systems, concerns, motivations, aspirations, cultures and/or lifestyles is desired.  Qualitative research takes place in natural settings to make the participant(s) feel at ease. 

There are different ways this type of research can be conducted.  One of these is qualitative observation, during which the researcher quite simply observes people in their natural environments.  The researcher does this by watching, listening and recording what they see.  If they are participating, they record what they experience as well.  Another type is the focus group.  The focus group is a type of interview, but with more than one person.  It consists of a small group of people and the researcher acts as a moderator: breaking the  ice with the participants, getting them to voice their true opinion and getting them to interact with each other.  The focus group is helpful in gathering insights, ideas, opinions and experiences from the participants.  Key, though, is to ensure the participants are all within the client or product's target audience.  If not, the feedback collected is useless.  

Here is an article that describes a study done on the consumption of nutritional supplements in adolescents.  This subject caught my interest because though this study was conducted in 2001, the debate concerning vitamins and how much of the nutrients are actually absorbed when they are taken orally is still continuing today.  For this blog, I focused on how this experiment used qualitative research.  The study was conducted in order to gather information on which supplements adolescents took, why they took them and how they thought they were benefiting from them.  78 adolescents, age 11 to 18, were studied for this experiment.  In order to understand each of their participants' perspectives thoroughly, the big group was broken down into focus groups of 16.  The responses from those focus groups were then content analyzed, which means identifying themes and placing responses into categories.  From this the researchers then were able to determine that adolescents may consume supplements and other things they think help them in both academic and athletic performance such as energy and sport drinks, without a clear understanding of health risks.  Thus, they were able to conclude that more education was needed in this area.

Qualitative research is personal and may discover things people did not want or realize they should reveal.  For a public relations professional and for their client, this example shows how helpful qualitative research can be by really going in-depth to their audience's perspectives and showing what should be done next.