Editor’s note: Cara L. Woodland is vice president of customer insights, Innovation Focus Inc., a Lancaster, Pa., research firm.

Questions can be powerful statements that reveal more than just an interest in gaining information. According to Christopher W. Miller’s Focused Innovation Technique, only 20 percent of questions asked are genuinely seeking information. The remaining 80 percent of questions are used as ways to offer, accept or reject an idea. Questions demonstrate the bias of the person asking them. To illustrate the point, look at the examples below.

Question: “Where is the bathroom?”

Offer: “What if we made it in color?”

Accept: “Did you know that we can easily make it in color?”

Reject: “Do we have the budget or time to make it in color?”

All research begins with a question to be answered. The way the question is posed will impact how the data is collected and interpreted. Within qualitative research, there are many ways to gather information to answer a research question. By its nature, qualitative research is subjective, and bias can easily be introduced. The response the respondent gives will be remarkably different depending on how the research is set up, questions are posed and the research is closed. The following is a Top 10 list of qualitative research rules of thumb to help alleviate bias within the research.

1. Prepare the research team before interacting with respondents. Assign roles to researcher team members and know how to use any equipment before starting the research. Determine who is leading the interview, taking notes and handling the equipment. Determining these items once the research has begun can cause undue stress and make the respondents uncomfortable.

2. Set expectations and build a rapport with respondents before jumping into the research topic. The leader of the research should introduce the research team, their roles, indicate how long the research will last, state the purpose of the research and tell respondents how the data is going to be collected. Ideally, the research leader should be the one to build rapport with respondents and sit closest to them.

3. Actively listen to respondents instead of just hearing. Active listening is a practiced skill that requires energy and focus. Active listening is listening to learn, empathize and connect with respondents.

4. The research leader should begin the research discussion broadly and then move towards more specific topics. This format allows respondents to warm up and also helps prevent the research team from leading respondents to a particular answer or topic.

5. Stay away from asking yes-or-no questions. When these types of questions are asked, some respondents will only give you a yes-or-no answer with little clarification. If a no answer is received, it closes the door for the research leader to rephrase the question in another way without appearing condescending toward the respondent.

6. Ask open-ended and story-laden questions. There is not a right or wrong answer in qualitative research, but even after being told this, respondents will still search for subtle clues from the research team for the “right” answer or answers that seem to please the team. The research team needs to stay away from questions that guide respondents toward a particular answer and taint the research. Leading questions tend to start with words like “do,” “are,” “can,” “could” and “would.” These questions can always be rephrased into an open-ended format starting with words and phrases like “who,” “what,” “when,” “why,” “how,” “tell me” and “describe for me.”

7. Do not sell a product or pet idea to respondents during the research. If at any point respondents feel pressure to buy or agree with the research team, they will no longer be as open and responsive. The research team will have broken respondents’ trust that the discussion was for research purposes only. This type of behavior can easily give research a bad name, similar to telemarketing.

8. Stay away from company jargon, acronyms and marketing language. Customers have a language of their own, and the research team needs to assume respondents will not understand the words used internally within the team’s office. Instead the team should listen intently to respondents’ descriptions and use their language during the conversation.

9. Use qualitative research techniques such as:

  • Probe for feelings and emotions such as happiness, anger, annoyance, sadness.
  • Ask the respondent to tell a story. The research team is much more likely to remember stories from the respondent than random quotes and observations. This could take the form of having the respondent tell about one of his/her best or worst experiences or make up an ideal scenario.
  • Engage all five senses. Allow the respondent to describe not just what happened but to relive the experience through sights, sounds, smells and feelings.
  • Use projective techniques such as analogies to explain how a person feels about a topic. An example of a projective question would be if the product were a car, what kind of car would it be and why, etc.
  • Continue to ask why, why, why. The ladder of abstraction will help the team to better understand the underlying motivations of a person’s behavior.
  • Use communication techniques such as clarification and confirmation to gain more insight into what the respondent is trying to tell you. This is a way to test the team’s understanding of the respondent’s answer.

10. Close the research. Just as the beginning of the conversation needs to have expectations set, the respondent also needs closure. The research leader should always thank respondents for participating, pay them if applicable and communicate the next steps in the research process.

Be thoughtful

The goal of all qualitative research is to have respondents feel as comfortable as possible, in order to gain the best insight into the research question posed. There are countless methods that could be used to answer the research question, but if the data is not collected correctly, the results are tainted. The techniques listed above allow the research team to be thoughtful when approaching respondents and take action to prevent further bias from being introduced to the research.