Quality Research Perspectives
In the final post of our Quality Research Perspectives series, we asked our intrepid analysts Kristen Balisi and Liz Ezell, our lead healthcare researcher Nancy Miller, and our Brand and Advertising guru Kip Brown to share their takes on what makes a great report. Kristen and Liz work closely with our moderators and lead researchers to craft the final reports, while Nancy and Kip understand the value of a quality report in helping shape effective messaging and better business decisions.
More than presenting facts and data, a quality report will tell a meaningful story that reveals insight and truths the client can then act on. The report should answer the client’s business question in a clear, succinct, easily understandable way that ends up saving the client time and helps them move faster toward critical business goals.
There’s a certain baseline every report should achieve: it has to be clear, concise, accurate, and attentive to the study’s topic. When we write reports, we try to match the end product to the reality — how the report will be used, and who will be using it. Some members of the clients’ team will spend time pouring over every detail of the report, while others want to absorb top-level information quickly.
We need to meet both needs. So the report should be organized and structured in a way that makes it quick and easy for each reader to find exactly the insights they want.
Beyond the technicalities, a great report will also tell a story rather than be just a data dump. And that story needs to be clearly communicated. There’s no voice-over commentary accompanying the report, so you have to rely on the report itself to connect those dots and draw those conclusions.
For me, that’s the beauty of qual research. Unlike a survey, you’re tasked with translating and distilling long-form conversations, which can often be messy, into quickly digestible insight that a business person can use to make decisions. We don’t want to sanitize those conversations, but we do want to convey the perspectives of the participants in a way that vibrantly informs and enriches the client’s understanding of the respondent’s motivations, preferences, and behaviors.
I think the key for a quality report is clarity, plain language, focus on the objectives, clear organization, and getting to the point. Fewer words are usually better. It’s important to write the report with the end client in mind and how they’ll be using it.
For my own process in writing a report, I start by looking through all the detailed findings from the interviews or focus groups. That includes recordings, transcripts, and my own notes. During the interviews and focus groups, I create data grids that group all the participants’ responses by subject so I can quickly go through them to find supporting points and connections.
When I go through the collected data point by point, I start to see those connections and begin building the story around a big idea. At that point, once I know where I’m going with the data, I start crafting the report, pulling together the relevant nuggets that tell the story.
One of the key indicators of a quality report is one that the client doesn’t have to rewrite. We make our clients’ jobs so much easier if we produce a report that quickly and concisely conveys actionable insights so the client doesn’t have to go hunting for them. That also means being able to connect the data points we share in the report directly to the clients’ business goals, so the report becomes a useful strategic or marketing tool.
We like to say that every study starts with the report. Meaning, we take the time upfront — before the study begins — to make sure we clearly understand how the client plans to use the report and what business questions the report should address and answer. This allows our entire research team as well as the clients’ team to make sure we’re aligned on the goals. Then we also know how best to pull the report together, so the client ends up with a high-quality document that delivers real strategic and business value.
A high-quality report is one that tells a story in a way that the client can hear and believe it. Qual research can be so subjective from a listener’s standpoint; there’s always the risk that, “oh, you heard that wrong.” So in addition to being able to hear what the respondent is actually telling us, we also need to communicate that to the client so they can buy into it and act on it. That’s what a great report does. And it needs to communicate that in a clear, concise, easy-to-read way.
I’ve read reports that do a fine job of conveying facts or verbatims from the respondents’ mouths. But when I finish the report, I don’t know what any of it means. It hasn’t been pieced together, so I don’t know what to do with this information or how to act on it. Facts are meaningless unless you’ve figured out what story they tell.
A quality report tells that story, without making the client work for it. In some cases, as a value-add, a report will also include recommendations on how to act on the insight you’re reporting. It’s important to make sure you have a strong relationship with the client and a clear understanding of their business goals and challenges in order to make sure recommendations are in line with those. That’s when a report becomes more than a report, but a strategic asset that delivers lasting value for the client.