Session title (Should intrigue & inform):
Are We Confusing New Qual 'Data' Sources with Analysis?
Outline of session content (max of 200 words):
( Amalgamate with benefit statement, below for word count total...)
Language, as much post-modern psychological thinking has it, is a way of
creating our world as well as simply symbolically describing it. Our words,
phrases and communicative acts create meaning and form our futures;
what we say, becomes what we do. And words, phrases and
communicative acts are the qualitative practitioner’s stock-in-trade How
amazing, then, that qualitative research has become so preoccupied, of
late, with what I would call ‘means of transmission’ rather than content. We
seem endlessly fascinated by complex, new, potential ‘sources’ and
associated ‘methodologies’ – ethnography, the blogosphere, social
networking.- yet searching in different places won’t change the basic
qualitative requirement; that of listening to (or ‘reading’ ) the language of
others and analysing it with experience, skill and mastery. …. A blog may
produce a more natural source for some groups of people, in some
circumstances, but the skills needed to work within language are much
more than simply those of the ‘online researcher’ or technician. I believe
we have lost some of our love of language at a cost. I will outline how
(re)visiting thorough language listening can pay significant dividends
through the example of Weight Watchers, whose marketing and
advertising we have worked to develop over the last 2/3 years. The ‘Start
Your Story’ campaign owes much to a respectful and careful process of
listening to women and digging deeply into their language – across the
levels of prevailing ‘cultural discourse’, through ‘stories told’ to ‘words
used’. The fact that we have lost sight of the ‘qual heart’ that is language,
is echoed in our historical acceptance of a ‘contractual lie’. By continuing to
operate ‘as if’ we are conducting remote, objective, ‘scientific’ work we
entrap ourselves as practitioners, and fool our clients about what they are
buying, what they are ‘paying for’ (and these are not the same thing) and
often tacitly agree to unrealistic and inaccurate research outputs We have
colluded, with our clients, in the use of a false language model which grew
from science (esp physics) and which regularly infers objectivity and
tangibility, to the constructs of ‘findings’ and ‘insight’, respectively.In doing
this we have devalued the meaning of both:- The Findings Fallacy
‘Findings’ ( though, admittedly often replaced by the softer ‘learnings’
nowadays), has done its linguistic damage long ago – building a culture of
expectation which pre-supposed tangible, ‘findable’, answers out there;
discoverable, as if archeologically…. ….which is fine, or at least ok, but
leaves out the very obvious elephant in the qual room - which is that of
creation. Most qual people know, from very early on, that what really
happens in qual work is stuff gets made up and that ideas get created (sometimes, woven in, along the way things are also ‘found’ -) and the way
this happens is all about language… The Inside on Insight Like ‘love’,
insight has become a kind of research industry ‘holdall’. And because we
are pretending that we ‘find’ things, insight has to be rationalised as a form
of ‘aha moment’ discovery; the one tiny ‘finding’ that becomes the key to all
else. Insight has been ‘shrunk to fit’ an impoverished (science-based)
language culture Based on ‘meaning as use’ (as Wittgenstein suggested)
insight is contextual and ‘slippery’ rather than finite or tangible, .and,
perhaps - as it is for Weight Watchers - created through playing with
language and accepting healthily blurred barriers between ‘consumers’,
researchers and clients, all of whom have contributed to a shared
language..
Benefit statement (Please summarize what attendees can expect to
gain from your session in 200 words or less):
The paper explores how research practitioners and research-buying clients
can gain consideraby more from their qualitative work if the cultural stories,
language
and word constructions within our 'data' are explored and analysed more
thoroughly. These language listening - or 'reading' - skills and processes
have been sidelined in recent years in favour of fashionable, but often
more superficial 'findings' revealed in visual/'ethnographic'/internet-sourced
records. This paper is based on practical case examples (notably Weight
Watchers) and simply makes the case for a timely reappraisal of what was
always considered the heart of qual - language analysis
Please provide a brief biographical sketch for all speakers, including
qualitative research and speaking experience (max of 200 words):
Rosie Campbell Director and Co-Founder of Campbell Keegan Ltd, a
leading qual company over the last 25 years, now operating as a
Consultant Partnership We have conducted over 1500 qualitative projects
for a vast range of different clients and in a plethora of markets. Most
recently about 50% of our/my work is for Government Departments
(including Inland Revenue, Health, Transport
Culture, Education
Cabinet Office
Treasury and Food Standards in the last 3 years) Commercial clients are
still important, however and I have been closely involved in adertising,
strategy and product development for, amongst others, Weight Watchers,
Bold, Pantene
Yoplait in the last year. I have given several many papers at MRS, SRA,
AQR, WARC and Admap conferences as well as Radio and TV
appearances in the role of research/market expert, especially in child and
teenage markets. I have a business psychology MSc and am the recently
elected Chair of AQR.
Full name:
Rosie Campbell
Email address:
Rosie@campbellkeegan.com
Mailing address:
27 Ardbeg Road, London, SE249JL, England
Phone (including area/country code):
020 7274 9520
Fax (including area/country code):
020 72748701