Formative Research
During the planning phase extensive formative research informs the Social Marketing, as well as the Technical Assistance components of a campaign. Research sets the baselines that allow the assessment of social and conservation impacts following a campaign. Qualitative research (e.g. focus groups, observation, in-depth interviews) is geared towards understanding target audience opinions, feelings, concerns and perceived benefits of current as well as desired management practices. Qualitative research is about creating a casual conversation with and between participants to establish a comfortable relationship, and to reveal underlying information unobtainable through quantitative research. Quantitative research surveys capture specific answers to specific questions to describe demography, identify media preferences, and assess the current state of knowledge, attitude, communication and readiness of target audiences regarding a certain behavior change. Both components ultimately inform campaign decisions like objectives, respective activities, materials, and messages for both Social Marketing and Technical Assistance.
• Training on qualitative and quantitative research methods.
• Generic qualitative research guide/procedure to support researcher in preparing and during research rounds.
• Templates to facilitate qualitative research analyses.
• Quantitative research (i.e. survey), following best practices for survey question design to avoid bias in respondent answers.
• Committed base of volunteers to support survey implementation.
• Software to process and analyze quantitative data.
Qualitative research techniques (e.g., focus group and in-depth interviews) geared towards understanding the target audience opinions, feelings and concerns regarding a certain behavior change are essential to create casual conversations for participants. This enables creating an environment of trust in which fishers feel comfortable expressing what they really think instead of expressing what others want to hear. The latter would make data barely reliable. Surveys that are built on qualitative research results tend to better inform campaign strategies, making them more aligned with campaign goals and objectives. It is essential to avoid setbacks when it comes to survey implementation, and detailed planning based on sample sizes and human resources is necessary. In that sense, building strong relationships with a committed group of campaign volunteers to support this task is essential.