The Benefit of Qualitative Research

In week 5, the Commissioner of the West Australian Electoral Commission (WAEC) kindly gave up his time to talk about challenges facing the WAEC and to answer questions that would assist us in our next assignment. Appropriately, the week's topic was "The power of observation."

A summary of Stacks (2010) 'Practitioner's Guide to Public Relations Research'  outlines that the intent of qualitative research is to bring forth attitudinal and behavioural insight through detailed responses. The qualitative research methodologies discussed, covered in-depth interviews, participant observation and focus groups. Upon reflection, I cannot identify which of the methodologies applied to the visit, except that participant observation is not applicable.

Reasons why the Commissioner's visit does not fall under the category of a focus group:

• - The overall purpose of the discussion was not focused on the exploration of the class' opinions
• - While the class had a common background, it cannot particularly be said that the topic was a shared interest
• - Individuals were not present voluntarily

Reasons why the Commissioner's visit did resemble a focus group:

• - Veronica played the role of the moderator
• - It can be generally said that it was a controlled group discussion
• - The Commissioner posed the question - what could we suggest the WAEC do differently in order to encourage our demographic to enrol to vote? He openly sought our opinions and discussion, which are elements of a focus group

Why the visit does not seem like an in-depth interview

• - An in-depth interview is one-on-one, his visit was not a one-on-one environment 
• - Questions had not been sent to him prior to his attendance. For the most part they may have caught him by surprise
• - The location was student domain. An in-depth interview typically takes place in a location where the interviewee is most comfortable or at least neutral (but never in the interviewer's company office, for example)
• - The diversity of student lead to diverse questions that at some stages also seemed to be off-track

Why aspects of the visit seemed like an in-depth interview

• - The questions drew rich responses
• - Some student were able to use funnel questions

In sum, I greatly benefited from his visit. I had prepared a couple of probe questions defined by Stacks (2010), which I unfortunately did not get to ask because there was too little time. However, I would have liked to have asked the Commissioner, was; why it was so significant to him personally, to capture the votes of 18-25 year old's - other than the fact that it was his job to do so? 

Part of me tells me that I simply enjoy asking the hard questions that make people uncomfortable, but the other part of me knows that everything about his tone, reaction, body language and expression would have pinpointed his exact attitude towards us, which would have given me a great head start on making recommendations. Not that the words he used weren't telling enough - something you simply can't acquire through a survey.

Well, at least I got to ask how old the social media lady was. Call it what you will, the fact is that nothing replaces the insight of a person's physical cues as much as an unexpected question. In case you were wondering - yes it was a setup, I knew the answer before I asked it. In fact what I keep coming back to - is that when you're trying to get through to people, just speak how they speak and the task will get a whole lot easier. If anything, it was the Commissioner's visit that proved it to me.