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Summary
Focus groups
Focus groups are a really good directed conversation. You’ve gathered a group of people, whether they’re your customers or a group that a client is interested in reaching or understanding better then you go through a series of questions to explore their thoughts, their sentiment toward a brand, or their behaviors, actions. It’s basically a way to help a client listen. They can’t address any opinions. The client must be either behind the glass or watching the video. They just are learning. They’re putting themselves in a position to learn from this group.
Qualitative vs Quantitative Research
What’s the value when we’re approaching a project and we’re doing qualitative, versus the survey, the quantitative?
It’s a one two punch. The ideal project includes both, because oftentimes we want to finish with some “how many.” We want to know how many (quantitative) people think something, how many people are doing something, how many people would never do something. We want to finish with some numbers so that we know if we should try to serve them, if we should try to have resources for them, and make some decisions based on whether there’s enough people going in that direction.
The best place to get those options from is to learn from people through qualitative to see what are the full variety of things that people are doing, or that people are influenced by, or that people are motivated by, and to really get inside their heads a little bit. That, to me, is the value of qualitative.
What we learned from Bible readers
The Bible “feels” too long and reading it all “feels” like too much work.
People want permission to know where they can stop. It’s a big book. These are people who can read novels. They read all the time but, again and again, picking up the Bible is much more daunting.
If you’re helping some folks in your church, or someone you know, or your kids give them permission, give them start and stop places, help them know, “It’s OK. You’re not supposed to finish the whole thing today.” Or, “It’s not this race.”
Knowing where to stop or where to start and jump in, because the big idea was it’s overwhelming. If we think about it, there’s a lot of text in the Bible. There’s a ton in there. That became really clear to me.
The biggest way you can help either yourself or someone else start to create a habit is help them find five entry points, five core places, whether it be show them, “Hey, jump in the Gospels,” and help them know this is where they are. Talk through, “This is what’s going on here. You can always jump in here and you’re going to get this information.”
Be sure to Tweet your questions and comments to us: @LifewayResearch and individually: @smcconn, @statsguycasey, and @lizettebeard. Join us next time for another edition of Keep Asking.
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