Welcome back. In this lesson, we will take what we learned from our qualitative research and see which responses warrant quantitative follow up. We are on the road to solving this mystery and putting together this complex puzzle. After this lesson, you will be able to explain how qualitative research can inform the design of surveys for quantitative research, and contribute to an understanding of quantitative results. Let's dive in. Qualitative research can and often does inform the design of surveys for quantitative research. Suppose a focus group revealed that all nine members of the focus group felt that battery life was the most important feature of a good smartphone. This is a great response and finding, but it's not generalizable to the entire demographic. But, that might lead me to ask a question on a quantitative survey to get a wider more generalizable response, such as, "Please tell me how important battery life is to you in considering a new smartphone purchase?" The responses could be, not at all, somewhat, important, very, and extremely important. Then this response could be quantified. On the flip side, qualitative research can also contribute to an understanding of quantitative results. In using this battery life example, you have already discovered during the focus group, why the battery life is important. People don't want to be stranded without their charged smartphone. Since we chose to gather 18-to-25-year-old students for this focus group, we have already determined that we want to learn more about this demographic in particular. We would then expand this inquiry to capture the general public in the quantitative survey. Now, suppose a focus group couldn't agree on how much they were willing to spend on the product. How much is not really in the realm of qualitative research. So, it would be better to be addressed in a quantitative survey. However, the discussion around price and reluctance to state how much in the group, could tell you that this needs to be part of the quantitative survey. So, you might ask a survey question to pinpoint how much they would be willing to spend. Would it be $50, $60, $80, $100? Or it might be better to put it in terms of a price range, $60 to $80, $81 to $150 et cetera. In the qualitative research for our business case scenario, we only just began our exploration of what a certain demographic felt about their smartphone in the qualitative research design course. Focus group participants said, their favorite features were texting and social media. So, how can knowing that inform the design of the quantitative survey. This is the time you sit with your team and read over the notes carefully. You may even want to incorporate some of the responses into the phrasing of the question for the quantitative survey. Often, you will conduct a focus group prior to conducting a follow up quantitative survey, when you are not sure of the most pertinent quantifiable areas to explore. Your moderator guide usually outlines general areas of inquiry that may lead to the responses you think are worthy of quantifying later. In the case of our focus group on smartphones for a business case scenario, areas that smart phones most important attributes, and smartphone costs and payment plans, were two areas that warranted further quantitative exploration. In other words, just because all focus group participants express that battery life was the most important smartphone feature, we cannot assume that a majority of 18-to-24-year-old affluent students feel the same way. We only have an idea that this may be true and must test this out in a random quantifiable survey. So, here's a checklist of steps I apply in drawing information from qualitative work to inform quantitative work. One, I design my qualitative moderator guide with questions that you think may yield responses that potentially can be followed up by a quantitative survey. Two, I comb through responses and your focus group report for hot responses that were voiced by several participants. Three, I see if the question and response would be appropriately transferred to a quantitative question style, such as, the how many, how much, and how important. Four, I see what other survey data has been found on the same issue via quantitative surveys. With those four steps in mind, you should have a pretty straightforward mechanism to derive good quantitative survey questions from findings you elicit in your qualitative research phase, through focus groups or interviews.
