Musings of a field veteran

‘It was a good group last night; we had 6 people attend and they can be paid’

That is a typical start to the day for anyone working in Field – and a good one, better than the alternative that feels you with dread:

‘The group last night was terrible; the participants didn’t really contribute, two turned up 20 mins late, one was struggling to stay awake, and one had a barking dog in the background - the client was viewing, and understandably, they were unhappy. We need to redo the group’

For some people, working in research can be glamorous. I spoke to someone recently whose job it was to fly around the world to observe first viewings of TV programmes to see live reactions of a test audience – sounded pretty good to me!

Other qualitative researchers may find themselves travelling to destinations around the world, whilst for others (most probably), particularly post pandemic with the resulting boom in online research, the furthest they’ll find themselves is in a windowless hotel meeting room in a small town somewhere in the UK.

Those working in Field however are unlikely to be seen in the outside world at all! We are the cogs behind the process, the mechanics that makes things happen. The silent sleuths, trying to find the 2% incidence respondents needed for that group in Aberdeen.

I had my first experience of working in Field in 2000. Back then everything was done on paper and pen and fax machines were used to distribute recruitment specs to regional recruiters around the country! Work packs were printed and posted and an unmeasurable number of completed paper screeners were returned to you. 24 years later it’s a very different experience (one I am sure anyone with an eye on climate change is grateful for), but what exactly do we do? Most people know what Market Research is, and some even know the difference between Qualitative and Quantitative – but what is ‘Field’ and what does working in ‘Field’ entail?

The best definition I have found on the internet is:

Field research refers to the process and methods of gathering qualitative data about the interactions of people or groups in their natural environments.

When my children ask me what it means I say something like:

‘If a client wants to know what its customers think about a new product offering, it’s my job to make sure that the right customers are in the right place at the right time so that they can give their opinions’.

Sounds simple? Sometimes yes, but it depends on the complexity of the project. Those ‘processes and methods’ may have involved:

• Obtaining costs from research agencies all over the world and putting them together in a concise format
• Writing a screener
• Booking the job out to field recruiters (the people who source participants for projects)
• Setting up and managing pre tasks (usually online on Whycatcher, our online research platform, and sometimes involving complex stimulus rotations)
• Monitoring progress
• Checking profiles
• Compiling schedules
• Booking venues & refreshments for face-to-face research/ video conferencing links for online
• Managing researcher diaries
• Sourcing any required equipment (over the years this has included Go Pros, Spy glasses, Tablet computers, Dash cam cameras)
• Organising travel/hotels
• Ensuring suitable consent forms are obtained from participants and that we are GDPR compliant
• Dealing with last minute cancellations and drop-outs
• Replacing respondents who don’t fit the spec

To work in Field, you need to be extremely organised with a good eye for detail, but also you must be patient (you will have a lot of last-minute requests and work with people far less organised than yourself)! You must also be pragmatic and diplomatic. You are the middle ground between the high expectations of what clients/researchers want, and what is realistically possible to achieve on the ground. Whilst of course it’s important to ensure representation of all types of people in our sample sometimes that elusive last person you are looking for (lives in a specific location/drives a certain type of car, listens to ‘x’ radio station whilst eating ‘x’ snacks and playing a musical instrument) may just be the needle in a haystack you can’t find!”

The key thing is always to keep the end goal in sight, making sense of human complexity, so that we can help our clients meet their objectives.

Working in the research industry wasn’t something I looked for, like many it sort of found me – but the fact that I am still here almost 25 years later must mean that I myself was in the right place at the right time all those years ago!

Soula Foster, Sept 24