3. expect great answers
Leveraging online qualitative bulletin boards
for international research programs
Moderating around the clock
Daisy Lau, Marcel Slavenburg

4. Why, when and how
to make use of online
bulletin board?
How to get the most
out of it?
2
Marcel
pimp!
How do I get the most out of …
online bulletin boards

5. Help our client identify white space in their
category
• Global leader providing cleaning
and hygienic products and
solutions for businesses to create
a healthy workspace
• To understand employees’
behaviours and needs in the
workplace
• Guide the development of new
products and solutions

6. Why global online qual?
• Developing global AND country-level insight
• Immediate access to target audiences along with participation
and buy-in of local stakeholders
• Compressing the time for insight across multiple markets
4

7. Why Online Bulletin Boards?
• Creative, interactive & comfortable
• Flexible in time
• Client involvement
• Customized questions
• Multimedia touchpoints
• Quant exercises possible
• Semi-ethnographic results

8. What are online bulletin boards?
• Moderated online discussion group
• Not a free-for-all
• Participants recruited and invited as
in traditional qual research
• Moderated as in traditional qual research
• Like other online discussion forums,
they are hierarchical or tree-like in structure

9. However, these advantages are accompanied by
significant challenges and we have learned
important lessons

10. Project Scope
Two
weeks
Ten
countries
120
respondents
7,200
pages of
transcripts
Daily
synopses
60% in languages
other than English

11. Time is not always on our side

12. Time is not always on our side
• Time zones vary across countries, moderators, country clients,
global clients
• Challenge of managing and including a global client team (with
country-specific stakeholders) in the process to provide strong buy-in
and insight throughout the process

13. Customize timing to countries
• Recruiting and timelines vary by country
• Some countries, like Columbia and Brazil take longer to recruit and
the respondents start on the board more slowly
• Stagger the recruiting time to start all countries at the same time,
or conversely start all at the same time but be flexible in the
timing of when the countries end and when questions and
exercises occur for each country
• Allow longer response times in some countries

14. Customize recruitment to countries
• Over-recruit for each country, as necessary.
• China: not at all – 100% participation
• Brazil: 50% loss
• Think about using custom recruit,
instead of panel recruit

15. Customize content to countries
• Developing global exercises and questions
• Will all exercises work for all countries?
• No, they won’t - Especially in Asia Pacific, some projective exercises
are considered silly
• Moderators, if they are native speakers, can customize exercises and
explain further as necessary for each country
• We see differences in social and work behavior norms
• Differences in ability and willingness to self-report by uploading
pictures and videos

16. Get the idiom right – native language moderators
make a difference
Thank you for agreeing to
participate in our bulletin
board
‘Meu nome é Mario e o
nosso objetivo aqui é lhe
fazer diferentes perguntas
sobre o seu ambiente de
trabalho, e tornar o seu
envolvimento neste projeto,
在这两个星期里，您的主要
职责是每天登录，因为我们
大概每隔一天就要发布练
习，需要您运用想像和创意
来完成。此外，我们可能会
每天向您提出新的和后续问
题请您回答。
Le forum en ligne n'est pas
un espace de discussion en
temps réel. Il n'est pas
nécessaire de rester
connecté à chaque instant de
la journée!
Sie müssen sich allerdings
mindestens zweimal am Tag
einloggen. Auch dies ist in
erster Linie deswegen, weil
wir Sie immer wieder darum
bitten werden, eine kreative
Übung zu absolvieren.
Außerdem ist es gut, wenn
Sie nachsehen, was es
Neues an der Pinnwand gibt.
Всего на форуме нас 15–20
человек, которые будут
делиться различной
информацией.
Nuestra cartelera está
conformada por personas que
están en situaciones similares
a la suya, en todo Colombia.
Hay otras nueve carteleras
We are eager to
understand how your v
here may (or may not)
different from those of
people in other countrie

17. Engage participants where they are
• Build and maintain a personal relationship
• Start with easy and exciting task
• Show the bigger picture to stimulate discussion
• Individual follow-up creates comfortable
atmosphere
• Easy to use platforms ensures important
information is not missed

18. Online qual enables multimedia responses.
It’s great, yet challenging…
Without native moderators, images may be interpreted incorrectly

19. Participants like the change of pace of our
MaxDiff exercises
MaxDiff exercises are also good because they are less affected by
cultural/country variations so you can use the results comparatively and
as a rollup across regions and globally.

20. Great results from heat maps arose from serial
concept testing
Different markup and highlighting tools generated individual responses.
Heat maps provide country specific as well as global insights

21. It has been fun though at the
beginning. I liked the shift in
questions (…) using a variety of
tools, and thinking 'outside the box'.
It definitely got me thinking about my
health around the office this past week,
let's hope I don't wind up catching a
cold now!
This is the first time that I have participated in an
online discussion board, and I think that it is a
useful tool.
It was really interesting to see what different people found important. We all have
different histories and experiences with health and our responses show this.
Engaged respondents = good data

22. Communicate, communicate, communicate
Debrief
session
with client
Moderators
debrief
sessions in
SKIM

23. Concrete personas to guide and stimulate
brainstorming
“I always start my day with a cup of
coffee…In my ideal workspace,
there will be lots of windows...I
wish I can have more natural light
in my current workspace…Health is
important to me because…I’m very
anxious about getting sick during
flu season…I think it will be helpful
if my employer can provide me
with…”

24. Questions

25. Daisy Lau | Project Manager Healthcare
D.Lau@skimgroup.com
+31 10 282 35 26
Marcel Slavenburg | Research Director Qualitative
m.slavenburg@skimgroup.com
+31 10 282 35 71
contact us or follow us online!