The best insights come when research participants are engaged and respected. When people enjoy taking part, they are more open and honest, and tend to tell us a lot more about who they are and what they think.

One of the guiding principles in all our research is to make it as easy and enjoyable – even fun – as possible for the people on our Caféstudy panel to complete. That means things like keeping surveys as short as possible, making them simple to complete, and avoiding too much repetition.

In qualitative research, keeping people engaged is even more critical, as we need people to be willing to open up. Topics often cover personal, emotional, and sensitive issues.

Online forums that fit around people’s lives

Edentify has been running online qualitative forums for over 15 years. The forums have been designed to allow participants to take part how and when they feel most comfortable – even in the middle of the night! Everyone gets a chance to think, answer, and explain over several days, without the dominant personalities or judgement that can sometimes impact face to face research.

Over the years, we’ve found most people, regardless of demographics or topics, feel particularly comfortable sharing text-based answers to most questions, but video, photos, and audio responses are sometimes part of the forum too.

In their own words

So how do our forum participants feel about the experience? We recently asked them:

Feedback from recent Edentify online forum participants.