QUALI AND QUANTI BUILD MORE KNOWLEDGE TOGETHER...

By the characteristics and structure of Perception – we are a multidisciplinary team with experts in quali and quanti and we form a unique team - we perform many projects we evaluate products and services; to understand habits and attitudes; to evaluate images of brands etc. that combine these two approaches.

At each project performed, we have confirmed the power that the data from both approaches get when analyzed and presented in an integrated way. In addition to complementing each other, each one can shed some light over the other: quali helps us survey hypothesis for the numbers and understand the reasons of some of the results observed; quanti helps give the real weight to trends that sometimes appear in quali in a more diffuse and fluid manner. Paying attention to the complementarity of data and valuing it is, in our point of view, obtaining clearer directions for the studies.

In products evaluation, for example, this integration has been very fruitful, since, in addition to understanding the performance of each product and their attributes, we can establish, with depth, the reasons that are determining this evaluation and linking them to the numbers. Filling the numeric evaluation of each attribute of a product with testimonials on this experience of use is obtaining a sharper portrait of the temperature of this evaluation. Besides, of course, having the possibility, with quali, to generate language for the future communication of the tested product.

For this reason, we have worked in many products’ evaluation studies with both approaches. We have a quali with products use (the consumers use the product and then they go to group or in-depth interviews) parallel or before the field of quantitative stage and we work with the results in an integrated manner.

We have obtained good results of the integrated work between quali and quanti as well as in the construction of questionnaires from the quali. It is a traditional practice in research that quali subsides the elaboration of questionnaires for a later quantitative stage. The fact itself is nothing new, but with a unique team, we have been making questionnaires at multiple hands in work meetings with the whole project team. This way, we can combine the accounts and perceptions of those who were in direct contact with the consumer (the quali moderators) with the expertise of the professionals in charge of the questionnaire elaboration.

In service evaluation studies, for example, from this team work, it is possible to generate for the questionnaire, not only general attributes from which determined services will be evaluated, but will unfold them into different satisfaction levels – identified and elaborated from the quali - to each attribute.

There are many possibilities in this integration between quali and quanti that are being created and applied to each work and in each project. The important is to have this established as a constant practice in the works so as to not separate what together doesn’t only add, but multiplies the knowledges of each project.

Camila TONI

Qualitative Studies

Camila Toni is a psychologist by PUC of São Paulo and has been working with qualitative studies for over 20 years.