IMPORTANT FACTORS WHEN
who ‘fit’ their organization. If the commissioner is a research manager commissioning on behalf of a variety of internal clients, he or she will additionally need to have a range of researchers available to match to the various internal personalities he or she is serving.
The need to match the qualitative researcher to the job
Even when one has achieved the hoped for good match of personality between the researcher and the end-user client, there are still a number of other factors to take into account. This is because qualitative researchers differ in the type of job they are best at, and this could be for a number of reasons.
Market familiarity
The knowledge that a qualitative researcher has of a particular market is sometimes considered to be very important. Sometimes it is genuinely the case that the market is complicated and difficult to come to grips with, although this should be possible to handle with a quality briefing.
However, it is often useful for a researcher to have some familiarity with the market in order to handle offbeat questions in the debrief.
Sometimes the very fact that a researcher has knowledge of a mar- ket can be a problem, in that this knowledge may have been obtained by working with a competitor. Some end-users are very sensitive about working with researchers who do work for the competition. At a rational level, much depends upon when the competitor work was done and what degree of closeness was achieved between the competitor and the researcher – but many decisions are not rational. Some companies do not mind their researchers working for their competitors, either because they do not see the work as being of particular sensitivity, or because they are respectful of the researcher’s integrity, or both. The decision is a two- edged sword, as many researchers do not want to work for companies that are in competition with one another.
Researchers have preferences for particular categories of research
Qualitative researchers differ in their affinity to various general categories of research (for example, new product development,
advertising research, children’s research). This may be to do with the nature of the techniques that work best (with which the researcher may or may not feel comfortable), or the people with whom the researcher needs to mix (not everyone, for example, likes working with advertising agencies), or the general output of the research required (for example, tightly defined and argued versus creative and more speculative).
Some researchers simply do not want to do certain types of research by virtue of the locations the researcher might be required to go. In-pub interviewing, for example, may not always be the most pleasant thing for women, as male respondents could well start flirting with them and not take them seriously, although again this is very dependent upon the type of pub one is talking about. Men can also feel uncomfortable doing in-pub work.
Demographics interaction
The demographics of the researcher may be relevant, as the similarity or differences of age and sex of the researcher and the respondents can influence the nature of the interactions that take place.
Variable workloads
An organization’s need for qualitative research varies greatly, depend- ing upon the projects running at any one time (and their stage). It could be that a number of projects require research at one time, while at other times it is comparatively quiet. Furthermore, research is often commis- sioned at very short notice for a variety of marketing, cultural and com- petence reasons. It is therefore not sensible for a commissioner of research to expect that a particular researcher will always be available to do a job within the timings required, because he or she is either already handling another aspect of the company’s work, or working for someone else.
The resources of the supplying company
Some research projects are better handled by a single supplying person (or at least perceived as such by the client), while others need more than one person on the job for reasons of speed, scale or complexity.
Some researchers prefer to work with another, as they feel the interac- tion enhances the quality of the output; others are less happy to do so as they feel they are not so tightly in control of what is happening.
Researchers have phases in their lives too
Researchers may become unavailable because they are going through a particular phase (they are human after all). They may decide that they are not going to supply research and take a break, for example to have children or to go round the world.
Normally, once a researcher has started on a project, any further work on the project will tend to be placed with that person. This is because the briefing gets easier and more efficient, and as important, there is also the chance (and generally the expectation) that the total knowledge on the project will compound.
The question whether to keep a single researcher on one project The use of a single researcher on an ongoing project does have the dis- advantage that other researchers do not get a ‘look-in’, and may feel that the company has rejected them as they may not be used for some time. However, it does happen occasionally, that the original researcher is not available for one stage of the project, so a new one is brought in and effectively inherits the project.
There are some who feel that the process of keeping a single researcher on one project is too restricting for the project, and puts too much empha- sis on the opinions of one researcher. In practice, a researcher tends to stay on the project because it is easier for everyone if he or she does so.