Value-based benefits designs (“VBBD” “VBD” or “VBID” for value-based insurance design) for health insurance benefits have gained significant attention among employers and health policy makers.  These designs have built-in incentives for members to use the most effective medical treatments and forms of prevention.   With the new health reform efforts, VBBD is often mentioned as an [...]

Many research studies lend themselves a single methodology—for example, it could be focus groups, or interviews, or online forums.   But there are many circumstances when just one methodology is not appropriate for the project.   Sometimes the geographic reach or project budget necessitates more than one approach.  In other situations it could be that there is [...]

Consumer Reports tackles Health Ratings Are you a subscriber to Consumer Reports or ConsumerReportsHealth.org?  In years past have you perhaps picked up their magazine, or looked in the book at ratings of dishwashers?  Or electronic equipment?  I recently had the opportunity to visit the Yonkers headquarters of Consumer Reports and take a tour of the [...]

With recent passage of legislation that could make landmark changes to healthcare, it is valuable to reflect on what we know about the average consumer and think about how they might react to the changes that are coming.  These are some of the trends reflecting the hopes, fears, and attitudes expressed by consumers that have [...]

When Ben spoke to the Northwest chapter in Seattle this spring, he set the whole conversation around social media on its ear with his contention that using social media in qualitative research is all about building and holding relationships—all relationships including those between companies and their customers and those between researchers and their subjects. Ben [...]

Qualitative research online – Bulletin boards Focus groups have been the standard-bearer of qualitative research for more than 50 years.   Eight to ten people seated in a room, face-to-face, having a discussion has become a powerful way to test concepts, messages, products and services.  But just as the Internet has changed quantitative surveying, it has [...]

Right now with H1N1 on everyone’s minds and the spread of the flu virus, hand-washing is getting special attention as a way to discourage spreading viruses and bacteria.  A public health quandary is how to get more people to wash their hands regularly with soap and water.  The challenge is 1) how to get accurate [...]

Each year we hold a “Best of Conference” day, both to show those who didn’t go what they missed and to give those who did go a chance to hear a session they may have missed. Our winter workshop provided a full day of qualitative immersion, first with Jay Zaltman on “Practical Sales Techniques that [...]

Most qualitative researchers think of using “creative techniques” when they are doing a project specifically targeted to creative work. When Jennifer Camelford, the President of Ipsos-Camelford-Graham, conducted a workshop on September 11, 2009 for the Pacific Northwest chapter in Vancouver, BC she gave the group a wide range of situations—personal, business, and volunteer work—that benefit [...]

Have you ever come away from a focus group with a sense that it could have gone better?  Or that there was more there to draw on, but somehow you missed the cues?   Kelly Wahl and Lisa Hermanson from Sofos Market Research Consulting conducted a workshop on May 29, 2009 for the Pacific Northwest chapter [...]