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L&E Blog Series: Working in a Virtual Environment – Stress Relief

DWG Admin on April 7, 2020

We are in week #3 of our blog series, hopefully you are settling into some sort of routine to help you make your work day a little bit more manageable. Our focus this week is stress relief because let’s be honest, the amount of stress and anxiety in our lives is quite high right now. We know you aren’t going to meditate on top of a mountain (unless you live in the mountains!) like the stock photo we used for this blog post, but this is a fantastic visualization tool and/or image to look at daily. Some of us have probably never dealt with this kind of uncertainty so we wanted to share a couple “de-stresser” tips from our employees.

Take a few deep breaths and read below to learn what helps L&E employees relieve stress:

Watch a funny or inspiring clip from a favorite TV show, a good laugh always helps us de-stress. A favorite of ours is from the wonderful John Krasinski : SGN Watch this week’s clip – Scott Johnson, St. Louis Client Services Manager
And who doesn’t need more than one clip to brighten their day, here is another favorite from our team. This clip was sent over from Tyler Johnson, Client Relationship Manager
Connect with your teammates regularly, it always helps talking it out. Specifically during these times, utilize video technology to stay in touch! – April Leonard, Medical Project Director
Make your space extra comfortable – buy a plant so you have some greenery on your desk and turn on an essential oil diffuser (lavender works as a natural anxiety reliever). You can control the atmosphere so try to make it as stress free as possible! – Kaitlin Plave, Account Manager
Take a lunch break: One of my favorite WFH benefits is the freedom to prepare lunch at lunchtime (as opposed to packing a lunch before going to the office), or simply heat up some leftovers. I also try to walk my dogs during this break time – a midday “fresh air” break is very relaxing and gets me on track to finish the day. The important part is to simply get up and take a break! – Kelli Hammock, Senior Client Solutions Manager
In addition to taking some time daily to laugh (or cry), exercise is always a great stress reducer to help balance body and mind. – Brett Watkins, CEO

Be on the lookout for our next blog post in this series coming next week!

L&E Blog Series: Working in a Virtual Environment – Establishing a Routine

DWG Admin on March 31, 2020

Kicking off week #2 of our blog series, were you able to get your workspace set up last week?This week we will focus on establishing a routine. Whether you are a consistent schedule person or not, you probably had some sort of routine prior to this new way of life. Now everything is out of sorts and you may be dealing with the new challenges of working from home too. Working from home is like a puzzle, you need all the right pieces for everything to come together. One of those major puzzle pieces is establishing a routine in your new work environment, which also happens to be your home.

Check out some tips below from some of our L&E employees on how establishing a good routine can make all the difference in your WFH set up.

Wake up at the same time every day! Whether it’s a morning I would normally go to the gym or not, I wake up at the same time each day. This helps me in establishing a good routine and also helps with falling asleep easier at night (bonus tip: go to bed at the same time each night). Something else I do each morning and evening is walk my dogs. As anyone with dogs probably understands you can’t mess up the schedule! Dogs thrive with an established routine, as you probably will too. – Elizabeth Wollenberg, Marketing Manager
I’ve worked from home in the past, even though I work regularly in an office now. For me, I kept a regular schedule, just like now… up same time every morning, gym, dress for work (business casual, even if I wasn’t going to be seen that day), then off to my home office. – David Mize, Client Services Manager, Columbus
Facilities Operations Manager
I always end my day with a list of priorities for the next day. This list sits on my keyboard so I can tackle my day in an organized manner! Lists are good! – Tracy Hyder, Senior Project Manager
Pro tip- pick out a good music station (if you can listen to music while you work). Some of our favorite stations include: Thomas Newman Radio, Coffee Shop Radio, Stephen Stills Radio and Meditation Radio.

Be on the lookout for our next blog post in this series coming next week!

L&E Blog Series: Working in a Virtual Environment – Your Workspace

DWG Admin on March 24, 2020

In this blog post series, we hope to help you if you are new to the virtual workforce and provide some tips that will help you adjust to remote working. Thanks to our proprietary cloud-based technology that is unique to L&E (it operates our entire business) the vast majority of our recruiting, project management and management team are virtually based and have been for well over a decade now. Each week we will share advice from our own employees in what helps them work remotely.

First things first, space matters! If you are new to having a home office, here are some tips in getting yourself set up for success from the beginning:

It’s important to create a space that can be entered in the morning and left at the end of the day, it helps maintain boundaries and work/life balance. The space in terms of your view or landscape is just as important! Natural light, a view outside, things on your desk or walls that motivate and inspire you truly help to keep the walls and solidarity of working from home from closing in! – Sara McEntyre, Director of Project Management

For me, setting up a separate space in the home has helped me to stay focused, in the zone, and less distracted. – Charlene Randall, Vice President, Strategic Accounts

Location of where you work is key. I set up my desk so I am looking out of windows and at other things that make me, a giant nerd, happy. – Heidi Garinger, Director of Client Services

- Having a dedicated office space is key for me. It really gives me that feeling of going into the office. It also helps minimize distractions. My spouse and I both work from home and we each have our own office so we can really focus on the tasks for the day. – Linda Judd, Account Manager
- Standing instead of sitting and set an end of day time and stick with it if you can. – Lisa McGary, Director of Client Solutions
- Have a designated place to work. I have found that if I try to work from the same place that I watch TV or sleep, my work doesn’t get the same focus as when I work from my in-home office. – Sheila Danhoff, Project Manager

Pro tip from most of our employees – get yourself a monitor to connect to your laptop!

Be on the lookout for our next blog post in this series coming next week!

Webinar | Technology Partners – Discussion with AYTM & QualSights

DWG Admin on February 19, 2020

Free On-Demand Webinar – L&E Webinar Series

On March 18th, 2020, we hosted our first webinar of the year. In this on-demand webinar you will learn about the newest technology companies that L&E has partnered with to make your research process not just easier, but seamless from start to finish.

Our Research Design Engineer, Renee Wyckoff, hosted this panel discussion and in this webinar you will get a brief overview of the functionality of each tech tool:

Quantitative market research survey platform from tech partner, AYTM (Ask Your Target Market)
Qualitative insights platform from tech partner, QualSights
Hear about real use case scenarios from each tech partner and how it can apply to your projects – including how COVID-19 has effected the research industry and what you can do to keep your projects moving along!

Guest Speakers:

Research on Research | New White Paper

DWG Admin on November 19, 2019

White Paper Download

L&E’s journey to understanding our research participants

Is great qualitative research recruiting important to you? We hear from clients that great recruiting ranks pretty high, which means quite a bit to L&E since we are passionate about recruitment.

We are so passionate that our Research Design Engineer conducted research with our own research participant panel to learn more about what motivates and excites our participants. So we ask you again, is great qualitative research recruiting important to you? If so, download Renee’s white paper and learn about the research we’ve done to help deliver better recruitment solutions to you.

To continue reading, download the report, by clicking here (no form to fill out).

Is your qualitative research helpful or harmful? | New White Paper from L&E

DWG Admin on October 24, 2019

White Paper Download

Is your qualitative research helpful or harmful?

Recent trends in the market research industry show that more and more researchers are looking to quantitative panels to complete qualitative research. The hope is that quant panels will reduce costs and save time, but are they actually faster and cheaper, and what is the quality of the data they generate?

With new research by Insight and Measurement’s David F. Harris and L&E’s Renee Wyckoff, and an in-depth interview with Procter & Gamble’s Tia Maurer, our paper proves that completing qual research without a specialized company poses a serious threat to data quality.

To continue reading, download our latest white paper, by clicking here (no form to fill out).

Webinar | Updates in Qualitative Research Technology

DWG Admin on August 12, 2019

Free On-Demand L&E Webinar

On September 18th, 2019 we hosted our most popular webinar of the year. We are brought back our most popular webinar from 2018 and the topic of technology in qualitative research! Last year we discussed how technology is bringing researchers, stakeholders and brands closer than ever to their consumers. In this webinar we circled back with Charlie and Lenny to learn what’s on the horizon in the industry with key technology. This webinar is sure to be fun with this duo!

Guest Speakers:

Charlie Rader, Digital Insights Designer at Procter & Gamble
Lenny Murphy, Executive Editor & Producer at GreenBook

Recruiting the Best Market Research Respondents

DWG Admin on July 26, 2019

Whether you’re conducting qualitative or quantitative market research, the quality of your respondents is the most critical factor in your project’s success. Excellent recruiting is a three-way street requiring strong communication and understanding between the client, the market researcher and the recruiter. And because there are so many moving parts to recruiting, there are many ways that it can go wrong.Here are some tips to make sure you recruit the best respondents for your research project:

MARKET RESEARCH VIRGINS AND OTHER MYTHICAL CREATURES: Thirty years ago, it was typical that researchers specified that they only wanted respondents who had never previously participated in market research. Those respondents inevitably became known as market research “virgins”. While it is now cost-prohibitive to limit your recruit in this manner, you do want to avoid those respondents who participate too frequently in market research. (A friend once told me that his wife, who had taken early retirement from a large corporation, “did a few focus groups a month” to supplement her income. Talk about a “professional respondent”!)

KEEP IT SHORT AND SIMPLE: The screener qualifications should be as simple as possible. After all, you don’t want to lose a qualified respondent because they got bored with long and overly-detailed screener questions! Keep the in-depth questions for the actual market research and use the screener to focus on the respondent qualifications that are most important to meet your project objectives.

FREQUENTLY EXAMINE THE RECRUITING RESULTS: Once the project starts, the recruiter will send you a report of the respondents that have agreed to participate. Take a look at the report as soon as you receive it and let the recruiter know of any changes you need. If the recruiter has missed a key requirement, or if the balance of the recruit is not what you want, the sooner the recruiter knows, the sooner they will be able to adjust. Don’t leave these reports until the recruiting is nearly complete; reviewing even a few recruits can give you valuable information to fine-tune the respondents with whom you end up.

A WORD ABOUT INCENTIVES: You have to manage incentives responsibly, but in nearly every case, you must offer an incentive to secure participation in a market research project. Consumers expect cash, cash equivalents (e.g., gift cards) or merchandise. Business respondents also expect incentives, but some may be prohibited from receiving an incentive due to their company’s policy. Giving a charitable donation in the respondent’s name, or providing a summary of the research results can sometimes work as an incentive to reward business respondents while keeping within the limits of their corporate policies.

BEWARE THE CLIENT LIST: Often businesses have a list of clients and prospects that they want to use to recruit respondents for a market research project. It is critical that the recruiter and the market researcher evaluate the list and understand how “good” it is as a sampling frame. In particular, is the list big enough? With screening questions and decreasing participation rates, it is not at all unusual to need a 10:1 list to participant ratio for successful recruiting. Because the list works for marketing doesn’t necessarily mean it will work for recruiting market research respondents. Work with a recruiting partner who has the flexibility to recruit from a client list first, but can draw from their own database if the client list is exhausted and you still need more respondents to fill a study.

UNDERSTAND INCIDENCE RATES: Do you know how many people in the United States bought a manufactured home between 6 and 18 months ago and who had a warranty claim for a defect with the home? Turns out to be 0.7% of the U.S. population. Do you know there are only 270 hemophilia doctors in the entire U.S.? (Both of these examples are real, so don’t assume this can’t happen to you!) Obviously, rare and unusual populations are more difficult to recruit and may require greater creativity from your recruiter. They will also probably cost more to recruit, may need higher incentives, and will likely take longer to recruit, so plan ahead!

UNDERSTAND PARTICIPATION RATES: It is no secret that participation rates for market research are declining. It is therefore critical to understand how the population you want to explore typically participates in market research before you get started. Participation rates are influenced by the length of the survey, how interesting the topic of the research is, convenience (e.g., time and location of in-person research, being able to start and restart easily for online surveys) and the value of the incentive, so take this into consideration as you plan your project. Often, being able to mention the sponsor of the research can make a huge difference in participation rates, so consider if keeping the identity of the sponsor confidential is really necessary for your research objectives.

SOURCE OF RESPONDENTS: Where is your recruiter going to find these respondents, anyway? Respondent panels, in-house databases, social media, purchased lists, association or company directories are all sources of respondents used by recruiters. What’s the best source for your project? It simply depends on your project. Is it qualitative or quantitative? Are you looking for consumers, business professionals, or medical professionals? How rare is the population of interest? How representative should the respondents be of the total population? Work with your recruiter to determine the best approach.

CONSIDERING MEDICAL RESPONDENTS: Market research with medical professionals and patients is understandably more complex due to the obvious confidentiality and patient privacy concerns. Before you begin your project, make sure that you are educated about medical and healthcare topics. You need to know enough to understand how to best explore your particular research topic.

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT: The simple fact is that the more recruiting you do, the better you get. Make sure your recruiter has strong experience, especially if your project includes a difficult recruit. Check their references and look at the types of projects and clients they work with most frequently. An experienced market research recruiter will have the skill and expertise, as well as the creativity and resources, to get you the best, most qualified respondents for your project.

Quality recruiting is the difference between marketing research success and failure. While recruiting may take a large percentage of your market research budget for an individual project, don’t try to save money at the expense of good recruiting. After all, bad recruiting leads to bad information. And, in business, bad information can lead to bad decisions, which can be expensive. Invest in the best recruiting possible to make sure your market research project succeeds

Webinar | Who Cares about Data Quality?

DWG Admin on May 30, 2019

FREE On-Demand L&E Webinar

On June 26th, 2019 we hosted our second webinar of the year focusing on the topic of data quality. Want to learn what the leaders in our industry are doing to get better data, and therefore, getting better insights? Do you want them to explain how they improved their data as a result of actual research they performed to understand consumer behavior and study flaws to deliver better research outcomes?

Guest Speakers:

Tia Maurer, Group Scientist, Procter & Gamble
David F. Harris, author of, The Complete Guide to Writing Questionnaires: How to Get Better Information for Better Decisions
Renee Wyckoff, Research Design Engineer at L&E Research

Renee’s Takeaways – Get the scoop on L&E’s Tech Partners Webinar!

DWG Admin on March 7, 2019

Webinar Summary

L&E Technology Partners – A Deeper Look at Qual Research Technology – Webinar held on February 20, 2019

As the first webinar in our 2019 series, we focused on bringing some of our valued technology partners to the forefront. L&E has the opportunity to see the tremendous value that working with these partners brings to our qualitative work every day, so we wanted to share what we know hoping that spreading the word about what these partners can do, will add some value to your work as well!

This was a very charismatic panel, as you could tell that they were all very passionate about what they had to say! We began by introducing Chad Reynolds, founder of Batterii. Chad practically grew up in consumer research, as he had the influence of his mom who worked for P&G for over 30 years doing product research. He spent a good part of his childhood testing all sorts of products from shampoo to potato chips! We’re all glad he survived, so that he could join us and tell us all about Batterii. Next up, we had Dave Pataki, Executive Vice President of Focus Forward. Dave had been with Focus Forward for over six years. Prior to that, Dave spent many years in the CPG industry, helping come up with innovative ways to grow either a segment or a product line in ways that were not always top of mind. Next, we had Colin Valdiserri, Co-Founder and CEO of Informed Decisions Group. Colin’s background is in consumer psychology and multi-variant methods. IDG was started about 15 years ago with the concentrating on generating non-traditional research methodologies, focusing more on behavioral analysis. Then we moved on to the always delightful Allie Putterman of LivingLens. Allie is the Business Development Director at LivingLens. Allie’s background has always been in market research, working from the segmentation side of things to new product testing, and now, on the tech side of things. Last but not least, we met Jared Nguyen, Manager of Research and Technology Services at Recollective. Jared’s background has been in both marketing and technology as a whole, and he has always been interested in ways to interact with technology He’s really been enjoying watching online qualitative research space evolve in the past couple of years.

In this webinar, we focused on learning more about our valued tech partners, and the services they provide.

Let’s find out what they can do!

We started by asking our partners a little bit about what their company does, followed by a feature that their platform or service offers that their clients get excited about.

Batterii started out as a tech platform, realizing that working in innovation and research projects, there were two really big needs. The needs were collecting insights from consumers, and getting at the really interesting and intimate moments in their lives, as well as pulling all of that information together in a space were researchers and stakeholders can collaborate on it. When missions are launched, people tend to get really excited about what they can do when different communities or different populations are built out. They get really excited about the types of questions they can ask, and then follow that with being able to capture intimate video moments that can be shared in presentations.
Focus Forward started in the transcription business in 2003. Transcription could be looked at then as a word document in different formats, edited and summarized from notes. What gets clients excited now is a new tool called Enhance. Enhance takes the transcript and syncs it up audio or video where you can actually use the transcript as more of an interactive tool.
IDG focuses on shopper insights. Clients get most excited about the life-sized virtual aisle. The life-sized virtual aisle offers clients an extremely high 4k resolution screen in which can be touch-interactive, where participants can shop, take products off the shelf, turn them around, and look at them. The biggest advantage is not being locked into certain markets, the virtual aisle is portable, and can be set up anywhere in the world.
LivingLens is the friendly tech company! They enable better, richer insight by turning video and other multimedia into stories, data, and insights. What gets clients really excited is the capture, analysis, and the storytelling capabilities that come out of that. The time that they can save working with multimedia content and the new types of data they can work with to gather insight from.
Recollective is an online mobile community platform optimized for desktop and mobile access. Projects can be small and personal such as a three-day engagement with 10 participants up to 5,000 participants for a year or longer across the globe in multiple languages. Clients get excited about a diverse set of tools available, such as quick on-boarding, participant tools, abilities to screen them, and presenting activities to them. In that socialized or private environment, you can moderate and pull data for analysis. At the drop of a hat, a researcher can quickly build their project within the Recollective environment with intuitive tools, different methodologies, etc., which ultimately helps save time with analysis.

Next, we asked our partners what they feel their platform or service lends that provides something truly unique or different to the way their clients do qualitative.

Batterii provides the ability to story-tell through an entire project in a very different way. Within the platform, you can create consumer-driven stories by being able to quickly jump through the walls of your room and show the actual videos we started with based on the consumer need. Here’s how the journey map was created around the pain points, here’s the 10 ideas that were created based off of that, then here’s the mission that was run where concept testing was done with different consumers, in a different market, who have the same need. Being able to tell the story all in one place has been the most powerful thing that separates Batterii from what is being done today.
Focus Forward is now using Enhanced transcription where transcripts can be synced up with video or audio, allowing clients a more interactive experience with the process and the ability to jump right to the key points. Where before, the only choice was for a client was to read through a lengthy document to get to the point of what was really going on in the research. With Enhanced, in a matter of minutes, they can get to key words, highlight clips, can pull those clips for presentation purposes.
IDG obviously can be used for the virtual aisles. Clients are also using in different ways such as creating menu boards for fast food restaurants. Rather than them having to mock-up menu boards, or make changes within the restaurant, they can use the virtual aisles for that, and make changes based off of their qualitative research. Another benefit is that eye-tracking can be added. Researchers can get a quick view as soon as the person is done virtually shopping to see what they noticed and didn’t notice.
LivingLens can help deliver greater efficiency when working with video. From the moment a video comes in, it is automatically transcribed, from there, you have the ability to search the spoken work, find exact moments of emotion, exact moments of when a product is mentioned, etc. This really speeds the analysis process. LivingLens also help researchers tell great stories through using video. Show reels can be easily created from the video content making sure that their insight is memorable and delivered with impact.
Recollective features an activity based engagement approach that offers a lot of flexibility in the way you design your research. You can easily use multiple methodologies, so whether it’s concept testing, shop alongs, or even a live chat session, all of the tools are there for you to review images, sort and rank, even engage with participants on the platform. The intuitive tools help you draw the entire community into content that you want them to see and interact with, and automation such as notifications and reminders help keep the process easy and running smoothly.

We then asked our partners what they may be able to find out using the data that comes from their platform or service, that they may not be able to using another platform or service.

Batterii can take very loose questions and refine them down into a set of different activities. Missions can be created, and also follow-on polls. Several missions could be running in 10 different cities at the same time where different themes are popping up, from that there is the ability to quickly create a new mission in order to dig in a little deeper. The content coming back such as video, photos, poll data, gives the team the ability to create sketches or concepts that could solve a problem.
Focus Forward, with the use of Enhanced transcripts, allows clients to get to the information that they need quickly and efficiently, so they may save time writing a report, or being able to use the content for a presentation, etc.
While IDG does not actually produce data, it is the type of display used to deal with generic discussions and then collect data from other sources. What comes out of the virtual aisle, really depends on what is built into it. Behavioral data actually can be collected as participants interact with the virtual aisle. Moderators can know how many times something was picked up, whether they looked at the back of it, whether they put it back on the shelf, versus putting it into their virtual basket.
LivingLens allows clients to use video across a variety of methodologies. Video provides additional layers of insight where you may be able to see someone’s environment, watch them interact with products, and most times, that is going to reveal more than they might not have thought to share with you.
Recollective puts care and effort into designing data and content format to allow for seamless analysis across all areas of the platform by allowing to capture response in a number of different data formats. By keeping all of that under one roof, you can interact with the content immediately, and literally moderate and do analysis without even leaving the page.

Piggy backing on the last question, we asked our partners what kinds of tools they offer to make analysis easier on their clients.

Batterii does image and video analysis, frame by frame. If you have to find logos, key words, objects, places, facial expressions, etc., it’s easy to quickly spot different themes and content.
LivingLens removes the manual burden that comes with working with video. They leverage AI learning to speed up the analysis process of the content. They can also remove any language barriers for interpreting content in any language.
Focus Forward, from a transcription standpoint, they are allowing clients to quickly get to where they need to go by taking human transcript and marrying it with audio and video at any given point in time.
Recollective provides everything from word clouds to photos and video walls along with dynamic charts in a dashboard streaming format. Also, multilingual automatic video transcription that feeds directly into text analytics and data discovery tools.
IDG’s biggest piece is the eye tracking they can provide in conjunction with the virtual aisle. Simply because moderators can talk about the different packages that are being tested, talk to the participants what they like and don’t like. Eye tracking helps convey information that a participant may not have been able to get across, such as what they noticed, what they didn’t.

For the last question, we asked our partners what they thought about AI and machine learning, and what impact they see them having on qualitative research.

Colin of IDG shared that from his perspective, there have already been some advancements in terms of visual recognition. Something that used to have to be done on a frame by frame basis, can now be done using visual recognition, delivering results more quickly.
Dave of Focus Forward shared that while AI has certainly made some advancements, it still has a way to go when it comes to transcription. Maybe ten years from now, but right now, nothing can replace the actual human transcript.
Chad of Batterii felt that we’re still in an infancy stage when it comes to AI machine learning for qual research. However, down the road it will help add a much more human element to the work we’re doing by giving us more time to actually spend with people. A lot of emotional benefits that we’re not seeing just yet, but it’s coming.
Allie of LivingLens shared that AI and machine learning are already driving a lot of the capabilities on their platform. An example would be by using object recognition during an ethnographic diary study, where a participant is shopping, we can pinpoint the exact moment that the shopper is at a certain place in the store. It really helps eliminate the need to watch through all of the content, or manually tag points. It’s still evolving, but it’s helping figure out how to work with qualitative research in a new way.
Jared of Recollective felt that leveraging AI is about bringing efficiencies to things, and that there are elements of qualitative research that can only be improved with AI. Recollective is always looking to find those efficiencies, whether it just being time saved.

We hope you found this summary to be helpful! If you didn’t register for this webinar you can listen to this webinar in its entirety, or download a free, transcribed version by clicking here.

Be on the lookout for our next webinar, which will be in June 2019. If you can’t wait until then, you can always view our on-demand webinars. Don’t forget to subscribe to our blog so you can keep up with what is happening at L&E!

Until June!

Your Research Design Engineer at L&E,

Renee Wyckoff