About Mixed MessagesMixed Messages in Qualitative Data
Ask a person a question on a subject he cares about, give him enough time to express himself, and you’ll get a convoluted answer with plenty of mixed messages. What should we do with such information? How should we consolidate the mixed messages?
Qualitative research collects in-depth, detailed, and lengthy answers. Although it collects more data, the data includes mixed or even contradictory messages. The customer says that he feels a certain way about a certain issue, but then proceeds to provide the opposite opinion about the very same issue. What can we learn from such data?
Consider the following excerpt from a typical interview with a customer. In this interview the questions centered on face washing liquids.
Question: Are colors important to you?
Answer: I was just saying that color … because everything needs to fit in my bathroom. So I'll get the face wash that matches the pink colors in my in bathroom.
Question: What does your face wash look like?
Answer: Green meadows.
Question: You buy for the color or the smell?
Answer: Both. I happen to get both. I don’t like ... I don't know, I always get the … I don't know, because you can see it. Mine is one of those things that, you can see before you squeeze it out. If I see, like if it's clear, like that big green bottle…. This one is just ugly. It reminds me a trash can. The dark one is like … in the clear bottle. I can see it, it’s green, and I'll buy it. I’m not sure why.
According to the phrase “So I'll get the face wash that matches the pink colors in my in bathroom,” all you need to do is to entice this customer to buy your face wash is putting it in a pink bottle. But the pink bottle won’t evoke an impression of “green meadows.” And how is pink related to “trash cans”? And how “seeing it before squeezing it out” relates to “pink,” “green meadow,” and “trash cans”?
This segment is not an extreme case. In qualitative data, mixed messages are the standard, not the exception.
This segment includes less than 150 words. Yet, it is very confusing. An in-depth interview usually holds more than 15,000 words. A market research study with 10 in-depth interviews holds 150,000 words. Focus groups hold even more. If 150 words are confusing, how confusing are 150,000 words? How many mixed messages one can find in so many words?
Computer Intuition specializes in consolidating mixed messages
Our software solves the problem of mixed messages by mimicking the intuitive process the person himself uses to consolidate his contradicting emotions. Since the software mimics human intuition, we call it Computer Intuition.
Computer Intuition performs a psycholinguistic analysis of qualitative data. It identifies all the messages in the data, and consolidates them by identifying those with the highest emotional intensity. Since Computer Intuition mimics the person’s own consolidating process, it produces the best predictors of his future behavior.
If you are interested in seeing a demonstration of the Computer Intuition psycholinguistic analysis, please call us at 585-507-4902 to set a time with one of our client representatives.