I wrote a discussion guide yesterday and realised that it was back-to-front…

Often we start broad and then funnel down to the issue we want to explore. We start off a discussion with ‘tell me about you’ to get a handle on the respondent.

We become more and more focused until we are thinking about the area of interest for our project.

Maybe that’s the wrong way round – we should start off with the very specific issues that the research is concerned with and then from that ripple, expand our enquiry outwards.

That’s what I’m doing on my snack project. I’m getting respondents to choose snacks first, then talk about their snacking behaviour, then talk about themselves.

Bit back-to-front, but I think it might deliver more reliable insight.

What do you think?
Kath