Today is National STEM day. Not everyone knows this about me but, ten years ago, I resigned from an easy, well-paid job to train as a teacher and for a short time I taught science in a London secondary school. Teaching was fun. I enjoyed it, even the planning and, sometimes, the marking. Sadly, I did not enjoy the school environment, it was so different from anything I had experienced before. Most significantly, I was challenged by the lack of camaraderie and the stifling rules. In 2013 I left teaching for good but I took with me a host of new and useful skills.
Sometimes I run focus groups and quite frequently I do depth interviews. More than anything these qualitative research tasks remind me of the skills I learnt teaching. If someone can plan and deliver an engaging lesson on the Doppler effect for thirty non-incentivised fifteen-year-olds they can moderate a focus group with anyone on anything.
Science teaching today is not what it was in the 1990s. The teacher doesn’t stand at the front telling the class about science. Instead, teachers must find out what misconceptions the class hold on a given topic and then work with the whole class to deconstruct these misconceptions so everyone comes to an understanding of the facts.
Qualitative research is all about understanding what people think about a given topic, establishing what opinions they hold and how they arrived at those opinions. A good moderator, like a good teacher, will be able to encourage a diverse group to share their views with confidence and, when required, disagree with each other in a non-combative way.
Just like a science lesson, a focus group that is not well planned will quickly descend into chaos. Whenever I write a discussion guide or plan a workshop I go back to the principles I learnt when I was teaching. In fact, I use the same exact same template I used in the classroom.
Do get in touch if you want me to share the template or chat about how I can help you with your market research needs.
