2017 - MaResCon Consulting: hands, brains and soul connected

1 WhatsApp - a tool to enrich qualitative research

I would like to share my personal individual experience with WhatsApp. A quick note on

using WhatsApp for qualitative research. Looking back at the project I must say it can be considered as

an interesting add-on to the research project.

But maybe some research specs first. The nature of the research was explorative (exploration of

different consumption moments), the method: focus groups on central location, 12 focus groups in total

spread over 4 life stages and 2 languages. Research took place in Belgium. Main purpose of working with

WhatsApp was to add an extra (visual) ± ethnographic layer to the research. It was positioned as a pre-

group task in which participants were asked to register specific occasions. I created 8 different WhatsApp

groups. Total sample size: n=96

Main challenges:

How to activate the participants, how to follow up and stimulate the participants to continue taking

pictures and how to manage the collected data?

Main learnings:

How to activate the participants? it is important to be very very clear about what you are looking for.

Otherwise the output can be very poor. In my experience, the more transparent you are in the

purpose and aim of the exercise the better the outcome. It also helps the participants when you (for

the clips) give practical guidelines in terms of length, commenting or not … I learned it by trial and

error but finally I succeed receiving interesting and good material. In total n=72 posted at least 1 clip

or photo. Participants received a financial incentive for posting clips and pics.

How to follow up and stimulate the participants to continue taking pictures? I would advise to use

the WhatsApp feature where your pc screen takes over your smartphone screen. (on

https://web.whatsapp.com/ you can find the instructions how to do it). It makes it much easier to

have a quick and easy overview of the activity. It allows to communicate with the groups and the

individuals in a very smooth way.

How to manage the collected data? That was for me a very though one. One main thing I have

incorrectly assessed: looking at your photo/video gallery the pics and clips are not labeled by group.

So all the pics of the 12 groups, the 72 participants, were mixed up. I was obliged to work via

WhatsApp to retrieve the sender and to label the visuals accordingly. Second issue, having photos

with comments, only pics are download in the gallery, the text has to be cut-copy-pasted directly

from the WhatsApp text post, so very labor intensive (maybe there is other way, but I did not find it).

Main conclusion: It is a relevant and a rich add-on to, e.g. traditional research. It brings you closer to

your participants. It generates quite some photo material which can be used to illustrate findings. The

task, being prior to the sessions, activates participant to think about own behavior and stimulates to get

into the topic. And fourthly (a positive side effect) the participants get to know each other prior to the

session. So a first meet & greet already took place before even starting the session.

Contact details:

MaResCon Consulting, Frank Geers

Frank.geers@marescon.eu

+32 497 523 528