Cultural Difference

What do you call a teacher leading a group of 20 children aged 12 t o 13 on bicycles up a one way street the wrong way in the middle of the rush hour.

Stupid? Highly dangerous? Certifiable?

Actually the term is ‘cultural difference’. That scenario is precisely what I’ve just witnessed from my window in the medieval city of Bruges in Belgium. There, a law has been passed stating that rules applying to one way streets apply to motorists not cyclists. Almost everyone cycles, young and old - a different culture from the UK.

So what the teacher was doing was clearly legal – if you still consider it unwise, then that is your perception, and your attitude to the prevailing practices.

Research in your Care Home can be conducted to understand better attitudes to and perceptions of the prevailing culture within the Home.  Is it friendly, professional, caring and responsive? What to Residents think, or their families – what do staff think – what do suppliers think – what does the local community think?

Let us design a questionnaire with you, circulate it online to your Care Home’s Residents and  families and compile a fully data checked Topline Report...

Time for a shiny new motor?

Time for a shiny new motor?

Here's a conversation that you have never overheard.

'I hear you have a Renault Megane - we'd like to swop it for a Bentley!'

'Don't be silly, I couldn't afford that!'

'We guarantee it'll be the same price as you are already paying.'

'Let me get this straight - you'd offer me a Bentley for the same price as my Megane.'

'Correct'

'Well I don't want it, the Megane suits me fine.'

This conversation happens all the time in the research world. Marketing Directors, and Research Directors cling on to their dear old research methods because .... well often just because.

In my world of Quant -> Qual, we have implemented great changes that still mean the same low prices - improved technologies often don't command a higher price.

So FD's CFO's and their pals need to embrace the new and accept change in research - our Insights will be all the more powerful.......... come to think of it maybe that's the issue - surely they can't be afraid of improved access to commercial truths ???


Jonathan Brill

Indisputably MalAdroit

RBS was fined £2m after managers in its complaints division encouraged junior employees to alter closed complaints file.

When organisations handle sensitive data internally our latent fears are brought to the fore.

Whether naughty organisations alter sensitive information or well behaved organisations don’t, they always have the capacity to do so.

The result is that their Research ‘findings’, or position in a league table, or data presented to share holders, are always treated with scepticism: In Adroit-e’s view such scepticism is justifiable.

A well known holiday camp operator never had any complaints about the cleanliness of the chalets – they found out why, when cleaners were found tearing up satisfaction surveys and binning them.

Adroit -e installed a self selection touch screen system for a well known foreign exchange company in airports. We discovered a manager tampering with the data to make it more positive – we could do this because we had installed back checking and timed input detection systems.

Complaints systems, compliments systems, satisfaction systems should all be handled by independent 3^rd parties.

It was recommended this week that the disgraced former Head of RBS, Sir Fred Goodwin should be stripped of his knighthood for his activities leading to the bank crisis – it’s all part of the same package.

Heads on spikes for all those who claim to know their customers and internalise satisfaction research!

Jonathan Brill 

Adroit-e Stupid Questions Checklist

Enjoy before the Festive Season


1)   Make sure questions are irrelevant to your sample population (e.g., ask people in St Albans about avalanche control).


2)   Ask people questions about things they have no experience in (e.g., ask someone who has never flown about in-flight conveniences).


3)   Make sure people feel that answering honestly could undermine their vision of themselves – either in their own eyes, or in the eyes of others (e.g., asking married presidential candidates if they have ever found anyone other than their spouse sexually attractive).


4)   Pose hypothetical questions that are so unlikely that the respondent has never thought about it (e.g., if you knew little green men were landing on the earth in ten years, would you buy more life insurance?)


5)   Create a situation whereby people feel rude if they don’t answer you a certain way (e.g., I’m a parent of a child with cancer. Do you think more money should be spent on cancer care for children?)


6)   Make sure you get the answer you want by creating a leading question (e.g., Doctors have confirmed that Stephen Harper has no heart.  Are you still planning to vote for this heartless politician the next time he forces an election?)


7)   Ask sensitive questions without any tact, assurances of confidentiality, or too early in the questionnaire, before people are more comfortable with the interviewer (e.g., How many times a week do you beat your wife and/or children?).


8)   Ask questions based on an underlying assumption that might not be true (e.g., asking every respondent with a darker skin tone “which country do you come from?”).


9)   Ask questions that are vague and abstract (e.g., asking which disease worries the respondent the most but not specifying whether “worrying” refers to the risk of death, suffering, or disability).


10) Use words that have connotations that can bias responses (e.g., should all Middle East terrorists be arrested? Should sexual perverts have access to counseling?).


11) Use unfamiliar words just to make sure respondents can’t understand the question (e.g., do you believe that a more sanguine demeanor on the part of Stephen Harper will assuage tensions in the House of Commons?).


12) Put two concepts in the questions or essentially ask two questions in one (e.g., are your two major suppliers based in Hertfordshire?  How important to you is it to stop smoking and lose weight?).


13) Damn the grammar police – use double negatives (e.g., do you agree or disagree with the following statement


14) Ask respondents to remember things from the past – the further back, the better (e.g., how many times in 2009 did you clean your bathroom?).


15) Ask people to do feats of mental arithmetic (e.g., what proportion of your weekly pay goes to housing?)

And finally: Train your interviewers to be over zealous from an early age

Merry Xmas

Jonathan Brill 

Adroit Pragmatic Innovation

It’s about taking what works in one segment and delivering it in another –it may be best understood as a recombination of existing practices - so we are not talking imaginative daydreams, nor uncharted leaps into the unknown. Our best ideas are often technologically incremental, which genuinely extend research boundaries.

For instance, we are extending research practices we have developed for high value international exhibitions for one day agricultural shows.

Again, we are using sophisticated on line research approaches, developed for the corporate market, in schools, to identify instances of cyber bullying with a high level of accuracy.

Equally, working with increasing numbers of MPs, we have adapted a series of well grooved- in research techniques to deliver a comprehensive, research programme in each constituency.

There’s more – but at this stage it’s just important to reflect from your viewpoint what would constitute a valuable leap in business development and whether research could help. Just don’t design the research techniques until we’ve given some thought and developed insights into the issues. Adroit pragmatism – the key to innovation.

Jonathan Brill 

The Apprentice- Melody Hossaini Rubbish Research?!

In last night’s Apprentice Melody made research blunders of such magnitude the business failed.

She brought her own inherent bias (what she wanted) into the research.

She asked a ridiculously small sample.

She asked respondents the wrong question.

She dignified this pettifogging process by calling it ‘research’.

She then used the ‘research’ to justify the way forward for the business.

Melody knew enough to follow the first tip Survey Survey Survey but failed to follow the cardinal rule – ALWAYS outsource your research to a respectable independent 3^rd Party.

She still might win … it’s still very watchable

Click here for the whole video

As Adroit-e starts its 35th research project for Reed Midem, Jonathan Brill reflects on the training programme needed to ensure sound intercept research.

The accuracy and speed of retrieval that can be achieved by intercept research is astonishing. Technology improvements account for the improved speed of delivery of reports – but the skills of delivery of the interviewer is the key to converting the results of a research project from ‘quite accurate’ to ‘very accurate’.  The core technique of intercept research is its random nature – respondents are not self selecting. Busy people are very important respondents  - far too many completions are derived from people with time on their hands. Interviewers need to be trained to deal with rejection, but not be brushed off too lightly.

I like to centre Adroit-e training around the three C’s:

Context – why the questionnaire is being undertaken and what the purpose of the research is

Content – what each question means and its nuances

Conversation - how to adopt a conversational technique with respondents – this should ensure truthful instinctive responses and dispenses wit the faux formality of an officious interview

The ubiquity of hand held mini computers( phones) enhances the informal nature of our interview interviewers and interviewees are in their comfort zone.

But there’s the rub – behind this apparently informal interview remains the relentless pursuit of the accuracy quantitative research can provide. Combine the two elements and you have a very powerful research medium – slacken the pursuit of accuracy with pointless small talk, or make the interview overly formal and you will damage the really quite sensitive intercept research tool.

For further information, please visit our website at www.adroit-e.co.uk/monitor/ or call us at 01582 463479.

Jonathan Brill

  

Very Accurate Research

First we had Location, Location, Location, the mantra of estate agents – then Education, Education, Education became part of the Blairite promise. Now if public sector projects are to succeed, we are convinced that securing funds from the public purse will require Evidence, Evidence, Evidence. That is where Adroit-e Research secures its edge, crossing the bridge from quite accurate data to very accurate data.

The benefits of working with Adroit-e Research as discovered for instance by Birmingham City College include, working with students to discover the best routes to understand the perceptions and attitudes of their key stakeholders. 

For further information, please visit the Adroit-e Research website at www.adroit-e.co.uk or phone us at 01582 463479.

Don't do Research

... if it’s amateurish and just there to tick a box. 

Conducting market research incorrectly is just as deadly, or maybe even more so, than conducting no market research at all.

I’m appealing to players in the wide spectrum of Public and Private sector organisations Adroit-e works with, because core values, held dearly just two years ago, are disappearing.

As citizens, you know how the chattering classes seek to dominate the local press and media coverage, often obscuring the voice of the populace at large.

Some, lobbyists or those with a particular axe to grind, try to bury  what is clearly the prevailing view. Research companies like Adroit-e are equipped and motivated to get to the heart of the matter.

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

  - George Orwell

Paying for Local Research, A New Model?

While value of accurate local research surrounding the planning application is rarely questioned, it can be perceived as quite expensive. One innovative approach we are currently working with goes like this: A developer wants to build a fairly substantial number of dwellings in a north eastern village. Residents’ perceptions will be gathered comprehensively through door to door research -- a complex operation. As a group of local residents determined to understand views of their community, they have no money. However, the developer has placed sufficient funds in escrow to pay for the research and we, as the research company, have agreed to make no contact with the developer. Thus, the client research relationship retains its integrity and our unique brand of speedy and very accurate research can continue with full propriety.

Simples!

Jonathan Brill

10 Tips When Thinking About Research

1. Survey Survey Survey 

2. Always outsource your problems to an agency you can trust 

3. Go Digital 

4. Avoid Stupid Research: many research exercises are pointless tick-box exercises 

5. Avoid Boring Research: where no-one cares about the results 

6. Always conduct Acute research: the insights could be transformational 
7. Start thinking from the end - Analysis: what do you want to discover? 

8. Questionnaire Design: make sure questions will provide answers you want 

9. Explore alternative means of data collection: if possible dismiss analogue 

10. Implementation of Findings: don't use same research company 

11. Inverse synergy - One size doesn't fit all 

Adroit-e Research Ltd

What Planning Committees Need: Evidence Evidence Evidence

Here is the relevant  extract from Hansard: 

A Bill will be introduced to devolve greater powers to councils and neighbourhoods and give local communities control over housing and planning decisions. Coming under the rubric Big Society a Decentralisation and Localism Bill will set out new powers for local communities. Ultimately, if this system is to stand the test of time and sound judgment, an even greater emphasis on reliable evidence of what the people are thinking (not just pressure groups or lobbyists) will be required by local planning committees.

That is why Adroit-e’s public consultation procedures, already activated local councils,  Planning Committees, Tesco etc will be even more relevant both in putting forward sensible planning proposals in the face of vested interest opposition and in preventing poor planning application being awarded despite opposition from the majority of citizens.

We have available a clear outline case study of an in-depth public consultation exercise undertaken by Adroit-e in co-operation with the local council and the Planning Officer.

Public Consultation Advice

Don't let the Localism Bill become a Nimby's Charter

National House Federation Chief Executive David Orr said in May 'Don't let the Localism Bill become a Nimby's Charter'

Commenting on the forthcoming legislation, Federation chief executive David Orr said: "It’s right that local communities should have a say on whether new homes and developments are built in their area – and we support the Government’s localism agenda."

"However, with waiting lists for social homes at record levels, we must ensure that this approach will still deliver the new homes the country desperately needs and does not become a Nimby’s charter."

Adroit-e is convinced that for any particular Planning Application the quality of evidence must prevail.

Discussions with experts  have concentrated on different funding mechanisms which can and have been brought into play to ensure that an appropriately qualified, independent research agency can work with local people.

I have also been in discussion about the advantages and dangers of collecting data digitally. If collected inappropriately, and we have experience of pressure groups running Polls from their websites, then arrant nonsense often prevails. In the hands of Numpties one person can complete a survey many times. So while the respondents may apparently show a number in the hundreds, only a few people have been filling in the survey forms, hopelessly skewing the results. No Planning committee will listen to the results of X Factor style Block voting.

We eschew such practices and adopt many highly original and reliable approaches. We do not guarantee that they will produce the answers a client wants, but they are properly representative and wholly believable.