How to conduct research projects remotely?

Communication with your client and colleagues

Nothing important changes in routine business communication. Most of us have been using the internet for sending and receiving RfQs, proposals, contracts and organizing the project for many years. Just replace personal meetings with video streaming apps that both you and your business partner are familiar with. We’ve found that Skype works best for us.

Telephone and email
Slack, Microsoft Teams, Twist
Skype, Teams, Hangouts, Zoom for video conferencing
Any other collaboration tools used by your organization

Switch projects from face-to-face to online or CATI

Yes, there are many projects not suitable for online methodology. In these cases, don’t convince your client to switch the project 100% to the internet;

Review the study design and goals again and try to pick only a specific part that is suitable for remote fieldwork. What about the remaining parts which aren’t suitable for online or CATI? As a general rule it’s better not to conduct the study than to deliver wrong results, so in this case, convince your client it’s best to postpone the in-person research.
Offer clients your analytics skills, experience and desk-research as compensation for the canceled parts of the project.

If your infrastructure is ready for home CATI, have your CATI staff (operators, supervisors) work from home. Provide them with the necessary equipment (headsets, computers, internet connection).

Recruitment

If you are fully dependent on face-to-face recruitment, contact online panel providers to help you with online recruitment from their pools.
You can also try CATI recruitment (expensive).
Use online survey tools for screeners – SurveyMonkey, Typeform, Google Forms…

Rewards for respondents

Change physical gifts and cash to virtual alternatives:

Gift vouchers from online malls
Paypal instead of cash
Loyalty apps

Conduct focus groups remotely

If your face-to-face focus group is already planned and you can’t re-schedule its date, try to switch it to a videoconferencing software. It’s necessary to choose software that will be easy to use for all of your participants. You can try Skype videoconferences, Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts and other common tools. Some apps offer video recording, some don’t: if not you can record the session with an external software application.

Of course, there are commercial qualitative platforms with video conferencing features (we at Collabito are working hard on a videoconferencing module as well).

Our office also has a license for a webinar and meeting platform which can also be used for online focus groups in some cases.

Have you also considered text-based chat rooms?

As many video streaming can easily overload hardware and software systems, we have observed many outages and slowdowns these days. As an alternative, you can consider text-based discussions. Neither your participants nor moderators need a quick internet connection as the technical requirements are minimal.

That’s why we developed Collabito. This online focus group tool offers several types of text-based discussions:

Live (synchronous) text focus group where all people are discussing at the same time. Usually a 90min. a session with 5-12 respondents.
Discussion boards, blogs, diaries, forums where participants can skip in and out according to their time preference.

Not conducted an online qual before?

Comparison of offline and online focus groups
Usually slower than in-person FGs
Only 2D, no touch, no smell
Be prepared for possible technical problems of your respondents
For various reasons not all people will come to the online session