Hello there. In qualitative research, an important skill to possess is writing solid research questions. The types of questions you may need to include in the moderator guide are the main open ended central question, which starts the discussion. The follow-up questions, which are subquestions looking for details. The probing questions used for clarifying the issues. And finally, prompt questions to aid in recall and trigger memories. As you begin your qualitative investigations, you will need to focus on how to go about this. You will use specific action words, such as describe, explain, explore to build your qualitative research vocabulary. You will also focus on what information you're seeking to obtain. So after this lesson, you will be able to design solid open-ended questions with probes and be able to ask questions that provide in-depth knowledge about the topic from respondents. Let's look at each of these best practices for writing solid questions. The first is to write solid open-ended questions that start the discussion about the main topic. There are usually several main questions for each topic that should be covered. You might have three to five main questions about practices. So if the topic is childhood immunization practices, you want to ask a question in a way where participants can answer with more than just a yes or no. You want to get a clear sense of what the participants think about getting their children immunized or using our business case scenario about cellphones. You might ask, please think about cellphones. What comes to your mind? Suppose you want to find out about your participant's current practice in getting their children immunized. An open ended question would be thinking about your child, what has been your practice in taking your child to the doctor clinic for getting their childhood shots? You want to make the language very basic, so that all focus group members understand it. You can see how these work well, because you ask them to think about their own experience. Then you ask them specifically what they do in regards to getting immunizations. In contrast to a closed-ended question that might be in the last year, did you take your child in for immunizations? And that would be a yes or no response. If you did this, you can dig your way out by asking for a show of hands. How many of you took your child in for immunizations? How many of you didn't take your child in for immunizations? And then do a count, then you would back it up with can you tell me why you took your child in for immunizations? And for those that said they didn't, why not? Can you please share some of the reasons you chose to get your child immunized or chose not to get your child immunized? Now that we have asked the main question to open up the discussion, we want to move to our second step to get more detail by asking follow-up questions. Follow-up questions are important, because they provide further details and expand on answers given to the main questions. Here are the criteria for writing follow-up questions. A follow-up question should help the participant want to provide more in-depth information on a topic to back up the main topic. Here is an example of a good follow up question about the immunization questions. So you say you got your child one immunization and haven't continued, which one did you get? And why didn't you want to continue? If you are writing a follow-up question regarding the cellphone, you might ask, what makes the camera function you mentioned important to you? Now, we have asked the main question to open up the discussion and we have asked a follow-up question to get specificity. Next, we want to move to our third step which is to get more details by using probes. Probes are important, because they clarify the issue at hand by asking, please tell me more. Please give me an example and please explain, so I can understand better. You will hear people in the industry talk about writing a probe. Sometimes, a probe is written and sometimes you will just verbalize it. Sometimes, they are called silent probes. A silent probe is when you remain silent, nod or you look puzzled. This also will have the effect of probing further, inviting your participant to elaborate. Here are the criteria for writing probes. A probe should help the participant want to provide more in-depth information on a topic. Probes should be specifically related to the question prior. They should back up the response, so it's clear. Also, probe should lead the respondent to the next question. Here are some examples of good probes. Please help me understand why you choose not to immunize your child anymore. Please give me an example of a negative experience you had with a shot. Sometimes when you use a probe, the participant might still have trouble generating the information. In such cases, you may want to use a prompt and aid or a cue. You may want to give your respondent a way to remember details they are having trouble remembering. Prompts are important ways to get the respondents to talk about things they might not just volunteer. It could be a quick mention of a person, brand or product. For example, you might want to say, you mentioned your child won’t need the measles shots, what about other diseases like whooping cough? For the cellphone, a prompt might be you mentioned the iPhone. What about Samsung, Nokia or Motorola? Good questions are the tool of the trade in qualitative market research. I recommend that you invest whatever time and energy needed to develop writing skills, and use good open-ended questions followed by probes, and prompts.
