virtual qualitative

57. Introductory Webinar

2010-02-14T12:46:00.004-05:00

I had the privilege to reprise my earlier webinar for Itracks on February 12. It was aimed at face-to-face moderators interested in migrating their business, in whole or in part, to the online world.

The focus of the 1-hour webinar was on Itracks' bulletin board software.

You can access the Powerpoint of the presentation through the GOMC, the Global Online Moderator Community, recently re-launched by Itracks.

56. QualBoard 3.0 Released

2009-10-14T16:28:00.003-04:00

20/20 Research has just released version 3.0 of its flagship Qualboard bulletin board platform.

Enhancements include real-time chat support, West Coast & European support desks, updated interface, participant and moderator dashboards, multiple question types (from traditional text open-ends to multiple choices), backroom discussion area, simplified annotating, manual and automatic group tagging, question filtering, WYSIWYG editing, discussion guide upload and download... to name but a few.

Contact 20/20 Research for more info or to sign up for a webinar.

55. Online Qualitative Tools

2009-10-11T10:20:00.004-04:00

In the September 2009 article for vue, the magazine of the Canadian Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, I report on nine online tools - inexpensive if not free - that might be useful to qualitative researchers.

There's a pdf copy of the article here (if you get a message that the file is damaged, you need a more recent Acrobat reader).

54. Applying Your Skills to Online Qualitative Projects

2009-08-28T16:29:00.002-04:00

I had the pleasure of being the lead-off speaker in a new series of webinars launched by Itracks last week.

The title was Applying Your Skills to Online Qualitative Projects: A First Look at Bulletin Board Focus Groups and it was designed specifically for established moderators who are interested in transferring their skills into the online space.

The webinars are open to members of the Itracks Community.

To register, go to http://moderator.itracks.com/

53. ACE

2009-08-21T14:16:00.003-04:00

Courtesy of Jim Bryson's QualBlog, I was alerted to ACE, "Association Collaborative Effort", whose objective is to "ensure that all online panel researchers and users, no matter the industry segment or the association affiliation, share a set of understood and accepted process and performance guidelines for online research."

ACE includes all the heavy hitters in the research field including ESOMAR, CASRO, and our own Canadian MRIA. Perhaps surprisingly, QRCA, the Qualitative Research Consultants Association, isn't part of the coalition.

ACE has put together a glossary of terms pertaining to online panels that you can view here.

Included in that glossary is the term "bulletin board", whose definition is proposed as Methodology using online typed "conversation" via an electronic bulletin board for qualitative research. The methodology is usually supported by software that allows respondents to connect and engage with each other in dialogue for research purposes.

I proposed a couple of edits (it seems anyone who establishes an account and logs in can) as follows:

Methodology using asynchronous online typed "conversation" via a message board for qualitative research. The methodology is usually supported by software that allows respondents to connect and engage with each other in dialogue for research purposes.

The rationales: an important dimension of bulletin boards is that they are asynchronous; it may also be helpful to use the term message board to help define bulletin boards.

Now that I reflect further, I think that the term "bulletin board" itself isn't strictly speaking correct. A bulletin board isn't a methodology for qualitative research, but a "bulletin board focus group" is.

52. Streaming a Live Webcam

2009-08-17T13:08:00.000-04:00

In a previous post, I discussed broadcasting continuously updated JPEG images from a webcam, to your website, and from there to the whiteboard on an Itracks BBFG.

It's possible to do more, using the same Willing Webcam software.

You can stream webcam video directly from your computer directly to the whiteboard of a BBFG simply by entering the URL of your computer (or your router) and the appropriate port number (by default 80) into the whiteboard area for the question that you want the webcam picture to appear.

And of course, either of those methods (JPGs or streaming video from your computer) should also work with an online focus group, allowing you to personalize either approach.

51. The Times They Are A-Changin' -- The Article

2009-08-12T13:27:00.006-04:00

In a previous post, I mentioned an upcoming article about the new tools and options available to online qualitative researchers.

That article has now appeared in the August 2009 issue of vue, the magazine of the Canadian Marketing Research and Intelligence Association.

There's a PDF version of the article here.

50. Adding Live Chat to a Bulletin Board

2009-08-05T09:06:00.001-04:00

In the previous post, I discussed how adding a webcam feed to a BBFG might encourage participation in a bulletin board, by showing the participants that "they are not alone".

In the same vein of "synchronous/asynchronous" thinking, it might be interesting to offer bulletin board users the option to have a live chat with the moderator: to receive clarification on a question, for instance.

It turns out that this is a easy to achieve as the webcam feed was, assuming you have your own website.

First, go to eTalkup. Sign up for their (free) account. Download the operator console & install it. Generate the javascript code and paste it on a webpage on your site. Now display that webpage as a whiteboard. That's it.

Now if any BBFG participant wants to chat with you, they can (when you've started up the operator console). All they do is click on the button and up pops the little chat window. Here's a screengrab of what it looks like to a participant.

Pretty neat.

Strikes me that Itracks could easily incorporate this into their features by licensing the eTalkup software & hosting it on their own site.

49. Broadcasting a Live Webcam

2009-08-04T10:15:00.000-04:00

I've always felt that BBFGs warranted a lot of extra care precisely because the technique is asynchronous: participants log on when it is convenient to them and basically answer a self-administered open-ended questionnaire.

I've always felt that anything that we as moderators might do to dispel any feeling that participants are "alone", would be a good thing. That involves things like very frequent logons on the part of the moderator, especially on the first day of a bulletin board.

I've also wondered whether having a constantly updated picture of me working at my computer on the whiteboard -- just like a traffic cam -- might help.

It would actually be quite simple to do.

You need a webcam, obviously, and software to publish the images or video. I've selected Willing Webcam for this example, because it allows you quite a bit of control, and the price isn't bad. ($US49.00).

Here's a screen grab of what it might look like to a BBFG participant, with the picture updated at the rate you choose.

You install the webcam, install the software, and publish the stream of JPEGs to a page on your website via FTP. You then add that page to the BBFG as a whiteboard.

Voila. A little bit of personalization provided and perhaps the sense that there is someone there that cares about them.

But might they find it's a bit too Big-Brother-ish? If anyone tests this, please let me know the results.

47. New Tricks for an Old Dog (2 - Skip Patterns & Probes

2009-08-02T12:07:00.001-04:00

In a previous post, I showed how non-postable questions could help the physical layout of the discussion guide from the main OLFG interface.

We also saw that these non-postable questions could be useful for notes-to-self, or moderator instructions ("FOCUS ON IN-HOME USE", for instance)

There is another way I discovered to embed notes-to-self, moderator instructions, and - especially useful - conditional questions ("IF APPROPRIATE, ASK").

The trick is to use a special field available for each question called "URL DESCRIPTION".

If you look at the screenshot below, you'll see that URL DESCRIPTION is the field that reminds the moderator what whiteboard he/she is about to post. But there's no reason one can't also use the field for something else. One could even include BOTH the name of the Whiteboard and the instruction.

The benefit of using this approach over the non-postable question is that the question remains available to be posted, edited, or selected.

Here's what it looks like from the main interface perspective.

46. New Tricks for an Old Dog (1 - Non-Postable Questions

2009-07-27T15:59:00.002-04:00

Characteristically, online projects seem to have very short timeframes, so there isn't always time to explore the functionalities of the various interfaces.

Recently, though, I had two back-to-back chat group projects using the Itracks interface, and I think I discovered (or re-discovered) a couple of very useful features.

The first feature is that not all questions in the discussion guide need to be "postable". A postable question is one that, when you click on the "post" button beside it, displays that question in the text stream. Very handy short-cut. If you want to edit it before posting it, just click on the "edit" button, change it, then post it. Questions 1.01, 1.02, and 1.03 for instance, are postable.

Why would you want to make a question "non-postable"? You can't post it, you can't edit it, you can't even select the content with your cursor. Well, I think that these can be useful attributes sometimes.

One nice thing about non-postable questions is that the Itracks software gives it a nice blue background, very visually useful to break up your discussion guide into topics and subtopics.

It's also a good way to insert comments, notes to self, or instructions to the moderator.

There is another way to insert these types of annotations in the guide. More next post.

45. qualvu and Multi-Language Studies (4)

2009-07-24T15:06:00.003-04:00

We've seen (and here) that traditional text-based online qualitative doesn't do a very good job of facilitating multi-language projects.

Because it does not, analysis may suffer.

Further, in markets such as Canada where French/English projects are a routine part of research briefs, clients may avoid online because text-based online does not engage them in the responses from an important market.

We've also seen that face-to-face qualitative research has solved the issue by developing an infrastructure in support of a cadre of reasonably priced simultaneous interpreters.

We've seen, finally, that:

qualvu generates high quality video with an excellent soundtrack

the video is tightly cropped to faces, so that lips and expressions can be read

the videos are of individuals, only one person speaking at a time.

These characteristics, as any interpreter will attest, are perfect for generating accurate simultaneous interpretations.

Finally, not only are the qualvu clips ideally suited for simultaneous interpretation, the software itself has an interpreter interface allowing those with appropriate permissions to view a participant clip, and simultaneously interpret it. This translated audio track then becomes available as a clickable option to observers (think of it as selecting the English-language version of a foreign film (if you look carefully below left, you'll see that the audio track is selectable between Korean and English).

In short, we have video material that is highly suitable for simultaneous translation, software that has the functionality required for creating alternative soundtracks, and a corps of experienced and reasonably priced simultaneous translators.

That means, that in the case of English/French projects at least, English-listening clients will be able to connect with their French-speaking consumers, arguably for the first time online.

"Sounds" pretty good.

44. qualvu and Multi-Language Studies (3)

2009-07-17T10:30:00.005-04:00

Last post, we asked how qualvu might facilitate multi-language studies, at which traditional text-based online qualitative does poorly.

Before I answer that, I need to digress (again) and describe how real-world multi-language studies work, using the example of Canada, where such studies are common.

(Those who have worked in French in Canada can skip to the next post.)

Nearly 80% of real-world qualitative studies in Montreal are, in my experience, conducted in French by out-of-province clients as part of a larger national or multi-national project, typically originating in and operating in English.

Moderators in Montreal are bilingual in French and English and adapt the English guide to French (often on the fly). To accommodate the client observers and, often, the lead English moderator, facilities in Montreal make provisions for simultaneous interpretation, typically involving a separate studio with audio-hookup to the recording system and the sound system in the observation rooms. The photo shows the setup at MBA Recherches (mentioned here before) and is reproduced with thanks to them and Julie Mayer).

The interpreters themselves are a group of some two dozen reasonably priced freelancers.

They could be a big part of the appeal of qualvu in Canada. More in the next post.

43. qualvu and Multi-Language Studies (2)

2009-07-12T11:26:00.000-04:00

In Canada, the typical multi-language qualitative study involves English as the lingua franca of the project team and French as the local language.

In a previous post, we asked the question, "How are multi-language studies conducted in the online qual world?"

The short answer is, "Not very well".

The detailed answer, using Canada as example:

Typically, the client will hire two moderators. The lead moderator, fluent in English, will manage the study, including the design of the guide (if he/she were bilingual, he would of course work in both languages -- there just aren't enough of us).

The local moderator, bilingual in French and English, will adapt the guide to French and moderate the sessions, in French.

As we saw in the previous post, translation of the French answers is either not possible or economic.

So what are the consequences?

The lead moderator must either ignore the French answers or delegate the analysis to the French moderator, who will supply the lead with a highlight report, which will then be integrated into the overall findings, with a few supporting translations

The client obervers (typically English-speakers) are completely removed from the participant comments during the actual sessions; little wonder that clients in Canada seem unengaged and little interested in online qualitative, when it does not permit them to easily access a key market.

How might qualvu solve this? See you next post.

42. qualvu and Multi-Language Studies (1)

2009-07-08T15:54:00.006-04:00

In a previous post, I outlined the characteristics of qualvu, a new online qualitative application using asynchronous video.

I suspect that one compelling benefit of this application will appeal to those who conduct multi-language studies.

Before I expand on that, I need to digress briefly and point out why traditional text-based online qualitative applications such as chat groups and bulletin boards don't do a good job of dealing with multi-language studies.

One might think that these text-based approaches are ideally suited to automatic computer translations. And they are, except that automatic computer translations are often hilariously inaccurate. To test out this hypothesis, take any English sentence, translate it to French using one of the automated Web translation tools, then translate that back to English. I'm willing to bet that 9 times out of 10 it will be amusing gibberish.

Well, what about human translation?

It's been tried, and it doesn't work very well, or fast enough, or cheaply enough.

In the case of online chat groups, all three of those reasons come into play: however good or fast the translator is at translating any particular comment as it appears in the scrolling text stream, he or she will simply not be fast enough to then type the translation into the text stream and somehow attach it to the original comment.

In the case of bulletin boards, traditional translation proves to be too expensive (as of this writing, about $0.30 per word) and often, not sufficiently timely: researchers want the translation shortly after the original is posted, not days or weeks after.

So, how do multi-language studies work in the online qual world? The answer in the next post.

41. qualvu

2009-07-04T08:04:00.013-04:00

One of the newest kids on the online qual block is qualvu, where bulletin board meets webcam.

At its most basic level, the software lets the moderator launch a video question with their webcam; then, at a time that is convenient to them, participants record and submit their answers, also using their webcam.

The possible applications of this asynchronous video are many and include online usability studies, concept and advertising testing, in-home use tests, and ethnographic research, to name but a few.

Once the researcher has adopted qualvu as an appropriate method to meet their research objectives, he or she will discover some perhaps unanticipated benefits:

The facial expressions and vocal inflections that give richness to qualitative research and are absent from text-based methods have re-appeared, courtesy the high-quality video and sound

More, these expressions and vocal inflections are tightly framed to each speaker's face and available to both moderator and observers (unlike the long-shot generally afforded to observers in a typical focus group observation room)

The webcam itself invites participants to share their opinions fully; probes for amplification may be a thing of the past

Like all asynchronous research, qualvu is respectful of the participants' time, allowing them to propound their opinions and feelings at a time and a place that is comfortable and convenient to them

There is another benefit that I believe will resonate particularly strongly with those who conduct multi-language studies, such as Canadian researchers who routinely conduct studies in both English and French. More on that benefit in a later post.

To summarize, qualvu appears to extend considerably the reach and possibilities of online qualitative research.

40. The Times They Are A-Changing

2009-07-02T15:05:00.004-04:00

I'm putting the final touches to an article for vue that will appear in the August issue of that magazine.

The article will list some of the suppliers of online qualitative software, including:

Itracks
20/20 Research
Revelation
Lidlow
FocusForums
Channel M2
qualvu

I'll have more on qualvu in a coming post.

39. Wanted: Online Moderators

2009-06-18T10:48:00.004-04:00

In the June 2009 article for vue, the magazine of the Canadian Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, I report on various observers who feel that the current recession is exactly the right environment for a resurgence of online qualitative.

There's a pdf copy of the article here.

38. Star Trek Transporters

2009-05-11T16:55:00.003-04:00

In the May 2009 article for vue, the magazine of the Canadian Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, I compare video focus groups to the transporters that enabled Captain Kirk and his crew to beam themselves instantly to distant facilities.

There's a pdf copy of the article here.

37. R.I.P. CSV

2009-05-07T10:07:00.002-04:00

In a previous post, I complained about the generally unsatisfactory behaviour of CSV downloads, whether for users, discussion guides, or transcripts. This was particularly true on international accounts where accented characters often failed to transfer properly.

Itracks clearly agreed with that assessment, since CSV downloads are no longer available on International accounts.

For those who still want to manipulate files in Excel...

Download the TXT file

Open it in Notepad

Select all (CTRL-A)

Copy (CTRL-C)

Open a new workbook in Excel and paste (CTRL-V)

To convert files from Excel back to TXT for uploading, read this entry.

36. Disaster Averted

2009-05-06T16:08:00.002-04:00

This isn't about online, but it's a good story anyway.

I had set up face-to-face sessions in Toronto & Montreal. They were at odd times: 5:30 and 8:00 pm in Toronto, and 2:00 pm and 5:30 pm in Montreal two days later. In each case, the client was summoned one hour before the start of the first group to help in preparations.

All this information was dutifully conveyed to the recruiter by telephone and email.

Toronto sessions came and went without a hitch.

On the morning before the Montreal sessions, I telephoned the Montreal facility. I told them I was the moderator working the next day, at 2 pm and 5:30 pm. I wanted to confirm that someone would be available to accept delivery of materials for the study.

Later that afternoon, the recruiter emailed me to wonder what the real time of the sessions in Montreal were. Worried, I contacted her & discovered that she had always believed that the sessions were at 1 pm, not 2 pm. The participants, facilities, and translators were all primed for a 1 pm start while moderator & observers were working on a 2 pm start!

Oops.

While we could have re-contacted the participants and re-scheduled them to the 2 pm slot, it made more sense for the moderator and the observers to get there earlier. Which we did, and had some very successful groups.

Morals of the story:

1. Deal with professionals: the recruiter was quick to offer re-rescheduling of the participants; the facility contact was a) quick to spot the discrepancy in times and b) professional enough to chase the cause down. Bravo!

2. Ensure that everyone involved (recruiters & facilities) provide you with an independant feedback loop that confims their understanding of the requirements.

The perspicacious facility, by the way, was MBA Recherche (http://www.mbarecherche.com/)

35. Mentoring

2009-03-15T16:11:00.015-04:00

I recently had the opportunity and pleasure to mentor a qualitative researcher who was a neophyte to online qualitative, though a seasoned moderator and researcher.

Here are some thoughts on how well I thought the process worked (from my perspective), and what changes I will bring to the next assignment.

First, I was struck by how new the bulletin board environment was to my colleague; I now suspect that, while bulletin boards have been around for some length of time (10 years or so), they have tended to attract and retain aficionados

Second, I realized that newcomers to bulletin boards (and online qualitative) have a steep learning curve ahead of them. It's not just the structuring and copying the guide, or the uploading of participants, but also the various optional features that must be set

Third, it became obvious that what an experienced online researcher sees as "features" or "options", the inexperienced researchers sees as traps for the unwary! Indeed, because inexperienced online researchers do not know what they don't know, they are hard pressed to make decisions on optional items such as the login page, or what questions to screen on

Fourth, the very concept of asynchronous research may not be readily apparent to all. In this context, it might be useful to develop a movie showing how a bulletin board unfolds over time, from a participant perspective

Fifth, I found that one recurring challenge when instructing my colleague was my inability to view her screen or her mouse actions. I realized too late that I should have investigated and used such desktop sharing tools as Vyew or TeamView; if possible, Itracks itself might attempt to develop some screen sharing functionality on its site

Sixth, I was pleasantly surprised to witness the ease with which my colleague slipped into "moderating mode" once the bulletin board had started... clearly, any initial apprehensions were with the process of setting up the board, not running it

Seventh, I was again struck by the way in which certain projects are such "naturals" for online work; in this case, the topic was health care and the afflicted participants were clearly enthralled by the possibility of participating in the research - without the need to travel or to present themselves in a face-to-face situation (indeed, my colleague had planned to run a face-to-face focus group with one segment of the respondents, and had been forced to cancel it because of the lack of willing participants -- the same participants who then opted to join our bulletin board).

As a result of this experience, I'd like to make the following suggestions:

1. Mentoring appears to be an effective and efficient way of overcoming the steep learning curve associated with a first online qualitative project

2. It might prove helpful to develop a movie depicting the typical progression of a bulletin board, from a participant perspective

3. Mentors should develop a simple overview of tasks associated with setting up a first bulletin board project for the use of mentored colleagues

4. Mentors should become familiar with and use desktop sharing software.

In fact, those sound like such good ideas that I just may implement them myself.

34. Analyzing Subgroups with Excel

2009-03-14T11:05:00.000-04:00

As noted in a previous post, Itracks has recently introduced an interesting feature called Breakout Groups or what I call subgroups.

One issue with these breakout groups, however, is that transcripts do not identify to which subgroup a comment should be assigned. More precisely, while each post identifies who made the comment (User Handle), there is no identification of what subgroup or subgroups that User Handle belongs to.

I noted previously that moderators should use the Full Name field to enter the subgroups that a participant belongs to. If you have done that, then analyzing transcripts by subgroups is relatively easy.

Here's what you should do then:

Download the transcript as an XLS or CSV file and format it as desired

Call that worksheet "transcript"

Add a new empty worksheet; call it "participants"

Download the participant list

Open that list in Excel and copy the participant information to the "participants" worksheet, starting with cell A1; notice that the 3d column, labelled "Name" now lists the subgroups to which each participant belongs; sort the participant list by Handle

Use the VLOOKUP function in Excel to tag each and every post in the transcript with the appropriate subgroup information

Finally, use the Autofilter function to filter the responses of the different subgroups.

The VLOOKUP function searches for a value (the handle of the poster) in an array (our list of participants) and when it finds this value, returns another value from another column of the array (what subgroup this participant belongs to). To use the VLOOKUP function:

Go to the "transcript" worksheet

Insert a column after "User Handle"; name it "Subgroup"; this column will be column D

Select the first data cell (D2) and begin inserting a function (insert/function)

In the search box that appears, enter "vlookup" and then OK when the window offers the VLOOKUP function as a choice

A small window called Function Arguments will pop-up

The blinking cursor is located in the Lookup_Value box; Excel wants to know what value we should be looking for; use your mouse to select C2; C2 contains the name of the first entry in the transcript (probably the moderator's handle); the lookup_value field now reads "C2"

The next field in the Function Arguments window is Table_Array; click in it; Excel wants to know where it should look to find out what subgroup (or subgroups) the Handle in C2 belongs to

Select the "participants" worksheet using the tabs at the bottom of the workbook; using your mouse, select all of the participants' handles and names, that is, the cells starting in C2 and D2 all the way down to your last participant; release the left mouse button, then hit the F4 key (this will change the reference from relative to absolute)

Select the next field in the Function Arguments window, which is Col_Index_Num, which is where Excel can find the value to return; enter a "2"

Click OK; the window disappears, and the appropriate subgroup name is now entered as a value in cell D2

Select cell D2; grab its fill handle (the little square at its bottom right-hand corner); double-click it; Excel fills in the formula in D2 all the way down to the last entry in the transcript.

33. Analyzing Breakout Groups

2009-03-14T10:00:00.001-04:00

As noted in a previous post, Itracks has recently introduced an interesting feature called Breakout Groups. This allows the researcher to assign participants to different categories that can then be asked separate questions.

One issue with these breakout groups, however, is that neither transcripts nor downloaded participant lists identify to which subgroup or category the comment (or participant) should be assigned.

My proposed workaround is to use the Full Name field to record what groups a participant has been assigned to. In my experience, that field has not been used to record anything useful, since the Handle, Username, and Email fields already provide enough information to identify participants.

Using this field places the subgroup membership on the Users management page, which puts the information where the moderator can use it.

It also makes subgroup membership a characteristic that can be downloaded, and that in turn, will allow the researcher to analyze the transcript by subgroups, something that cannot be done now.

I'll show how in a subsequent post.

32. Subgroups in Bulletin Boards

2009-03-12T15:48:00.006-04:00

Recently, Itracks introduced the "Breakout Group" feature in BBFGs.

Essentially, researchers can assign participants in a bulletin board focus group to one or more sub-groups, like user and non-users, for instance. Different subgroups can then be asked different questions.

This can be very useful in any number of applications, including breakout sessions. For instance, users and non-users could be asked questions 1 through 3, and 6. Users (and only users) would in addition see question 4, while non-users (and only non-users) would be asked question 5.

The Breakout Group feature can even be used to run two or more parallel bulletin boards within one, at somewhat less cost and bother than running two separate bulletin boards.

I'd like to see a few more tweaks on this feature:

Currently, there is no easy way to tell to what subgroup a participant belongs when viewing the discussion group; it might be interesting for Itracks to add the subgroup membership information to each participant's profile available from the "VIEW INFO" links on the main page
Similarly, it might be useful if email recipients could be selected or sorted on the basis of their membership in subgroups, allowing the researcher to tailor his or her email transmissions to the needs of different subgroups
There is no information about subgroup membership on the users' management page (to see to what subgroup a participant has been assigned, the researcher must navigate to the "Groups" page). It would be useful if Itracks were to provide a column indicating to which group a participant belongs on the Users' management page
Finally, there is insufficient support for the subgroup feature in transcripts: there is no ability to filter the download by subgroup, nor are the individual posts identified originating from any sub-group.

There are, however, work-arounds to the last two of these shortcomings. Stay tuned.

31. The Real Value of Blogging

2009-03-09T15:06:00.001-04:00

My friend, Mark Dallas, sent me this.

30. Tags and Annotations - The Article

2009-03-07T10:06:00.003-05:00

In a previous post, I discussed the introduction of tagging and annotation at Itracks.

That post formed the basis for an article that appeared in the March 2009 issue of vue, the magazine of the Canadian Marketing Research and Intelligence Association.

There's a PDF version of the article here.

29. Email Formatting

2009-02-19T11:39:00.010-05:00

The Itracks software gives the user access to a mass emailer that is useful for sending invitations and reminders.

This emailer is similar to a mail merge program: each recipient receives their own, personalized copy of the message; no one sees that others have received a similar message or knows any details of the other recipients.

The emailer makes use of various variables (for instance, #PASSWORD#) to insert the appropriate value in each email.

Itracks even provides sample email letters (participant invitations, participant reminders, and observer invitations) that are useful start for composing your own emails. Your own, final, versions can then be saved on the Itracks system for further use.

One of the quirks in the existing system is that the templates provided by Itracks contain hard carriage returns at every 60th character. The result is that received emails look "skinny" when viewed in a typical mail client. Moreover, additions by the user do not include these returns, so that edited emails look awkward (see screengrab).

The work-around is to import the selected template into an empty Word document; search-and-replace all double-paragraphs with **; search-and-replace all hard returns (^p) with a single space; replace all double spaces with single spaces; and finally, replace all ** with double paragraphs.

Make the desired changes to the template, copy and paste it back into the Itracks system, and save it with an appropriate name.

It works, but it sure would be simpler if Itracks got rid of those embedded hard carriage returns!

28. Tag Clouds, The Article

2009-01-13T15:05:00.001-05:00

In a previous post, I discussed the potential use of tag clouds for qualitative marketing research analysis and report-writing.

That post formed the basis for an article that appeared in the January issue of vue, the magazine of the Canadian Marketing Research and Intelligence Association.

There's a PDF version of the article here.

27. New Feature at Itracks: Tags and Annotations

2008-12-22T15:45:00.008-05:00

Earlier, I posted a heads-up about a new feature about to find its way to the Itracks BBFG software.

That feature, which Itracks calls "Footnotes", has now been announced and implemented.

Footnotes allows the researcher to code or tag responses with a customizable set of categories. For instance, I might decide to code any quotation-worthy response under the tag "quotable". Once ready to begin my analysis and reporting, I could download the transcript and sort all the "quotables" to jump-start my analysis. This on-the-fly coding also ensures that I do not inadvertently forget important statements by participants.

The coding feature could be used in various other ways. For instance, I might use a "positive" and "negative" tag in certain questions to help me sort through the wealth of information that is invariably generated on bulletin board focus groups. As well, I might have a category called "Further probes" that I might attach to responses for eventual followup.

The software allows the researcher to use multiple codes (a participant statement can be both "positive" and "quotable", for instance).

The software also provides for a visual cue (a small coloured square) indicating that a particular respondent response has been tagged. The small square's colour is customizable, as is the name of the tag itself. There are as many squares visible on the response as there are tags assigned to a particular response.

The introduction of this tagging feature alone would be cause for celebration among users of the Itracks BBFG. But there's more.

Itracks has also introduced an annotation feature. Not only can the researcher assign a code or tag to each participant statement, he or she can also add a comment (of practically any length) to each tag, for each comment.

This represents a very welcome development that I'm sure will result in faster and better analysis and reporting. Consider that the researcher can now, as he or she is reading a participant comment for the first time, quickly and painlessly attach immediate reactions, thoughts, insights, or even preliminary hypotheses to the statement.

I can imagine using a series of codes to carry all of the annotations, say "Observations", "Hypothesis", "Conclusion", and "Implications". As the discussion portion of the project progresses to its eventual end, the report almost builds itself from these annotations.

In fact, given that these annotations can be downloaded as part of the transcript, it is not a reach to suspect that reports will now be already 50% complete when the interviewing part of the project ends.

Kudos.

26. New Feature at Itracks

2008-11-10T10:51:00.002-05:00

I had the opportunity on Friday to test drive a new feature on the Itracks bulletin boards.

Its planned release is mid-December 2008.

I can't say anything about it yet beyond the fact that it is a long-awaited enhancement that should aid significantly in analyis and report-writing.

Stay tuned.

27. Live Moderator Webcam

2008-11-09T20:03:00.004-05:00

You're intrigued by the idea of a live webcam feed of you, the moderator.

You have no webcam, though. Or, you have a webcam, but the quality leaves you frowning.

If you have an unused camcorder around the house (perhaps an old analog camcorder?), there is a wonderful program called WebCamDV that let's you put your unused or under-used camcorder to work as a webcam.

Presto, you now have all the features (perhaps including quality optics, a zoomable lens, remote control, etc.) of your camcorder available as a webcam.

The webcam is already paid for, and the software is $20US.

25. RIP CSV Downloads

2008-10-22T11:19:00.004-04:00

As reported in an earlier post, there was limited usefulness in downloading CSV files from International Itracks accounts.

The folks there have resolved these issues by the simple expedient of only allowing TXT downloads.

Which work just fine.

24. Using Excel To Analyze Transcripts

2008-10-18T11:07:00.004-04:00

In 2002, I wrote an article for the Itracks newsletter that also appeared in QRCA Views.

The article deals with using Excel to analyze transcripts, and I think that it is still valid today.

You can read it here.

23. MAcroExpress: BBFG Text Styling

2008-10-08T10:00:00.000-04:00

Just like in the OLFG, it makes sense to convert text stylings into something that the Itracks software can display via HTML tags.

This macro does that, and you're welcome to it, either saved with the document, or as a BAS file here.

22. MacroExpress: Uploading BBFG Guides - The Template

2008-10-03T10:00:00.000-04:00

Before we can consider uploading a BBFG discussion guide, we must agree on a format for the offline guide.

Using an approach similar to what I used for the OLFG guide, I've developed a template for a bulletin board discussion guide.

If the researcher abides by a few conventions and uses this template, he or she will subsequently be able to automate the uploading of this BBFG guide using MacroExpress.

The conventions:

The use of a "topic.question" labelling format (as for the OLFG guide)
Topics must have a title but the question field text must remain empty
Questions must have question text in that field, but the Topic name must remain blank.

That's all there is to it! You can find the template here. The usual warnings apply.

21. MacroExpress: Uploading BBFG Guides

2008-10-01T10:00:00.000-04:00

While Itracks allows us to upload an OLFG discussion guide, there is no such functionality with the BBFG: BBFG guides must generally be entered in the system interactively.*

This means that the researcher must expend quite a bit of time & energy in moving an approved guide from the offline to the online world.

Further, the BBFG discussion guide is itself quite complex: for one thing, the guide is structured, first by topic, then by question. For each topic, the moderator must enter

the topic name
optionally, any associated URL or whiteboard
optionally, whether this URL or whiteboard should be displayed in a new browser window
optionally, the release time & date of the topic

For each question, the moderator must enter (and provide the software with)

the question text
(optionally) whether the question is regular, uninfluenced, or "interview" style
(optionally) whether it must be answered as part of a sequence
(optionally) whether it is an exception to a sequential requirement
(optionally) any associated URL or whiteboard
(optionally) whether this URL or whiteboard should be displayed in a new browser window
(optionally) the release time & date of the question

This is a lot of information to enter, one question at a time, one field at a time.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were some way to automate this?

There is, actually, and it involves our old friend MacroExpress. Stay tuned.

* Note, however, that once you have a BBFG guide in the system, it is possible to copy it over to another project (Itracks calls this "importing") .

20. OLFG Discussion Guides and Whiteboards

2008-08-25T08:00:00.008-04:00

The whiteboard area is the area of the screen where whiteboards are displayed during the group discussion or interview. Whiteboards themselves are web-friendly media (such as JPEGs, GIFs, or Flash for instance) or web pages (HTML).

There are two ways to display whiteboards to the participants:

Selecting from a drop-down list from those whiteboards already uploaded to the Itracks site (very useful when, for instance, going back to a whiteboard that has already been shown in the discussion)
Clicking on a hyperlink located in the online guide (very useful in the normal course of a discussion when the appropriate whiteboard is easy at hand). This hyperlink is created by the Itracks software when the researcher associates an absolute or relative URL with a question.

Itracks suggests that this process of associating whiteboards with questions be carried out once the guide (and the whiteboards) have been uploaded to the Itracks site. This process, however, will require more manual labour from the researcher. This extra work can be avoided if you take the following precautions when preparing your offline Word discussion guide:

Make it a habit to enter a moderator-friendly description "URL Description" for any absolute URLs (such as http://pbelisle.com/virtual/example.gif) to reduce the real-estate taken up by the URL in the online guide preview
Ensure that all whiteboards have been uploaded before you upload the guide
Edit one of the uploaded whiteboards. Notice that its URL includes a relative path to the folder on the Itracks server where it lives (typically, an account number and a project number, like this: "20026\200260001\Bienvenue.gif". Ensure that this relative path is entered in the Word OLFG Guide for all whiteboards.

19. Uploading Whiteboards II

2008-08-21T08:00:00.003-04:00

In a previous post, I lamented the lack of a batch uploading capability for whiteboards in the Itracks software.

The solution I proposed earlier, a MacroExpress macro, only worked with the English-version OLFG.

I've now modified it to work with both OLFG and BBFG, in both French and English. It seems to work well with screen resolutions of either 1024 x 768 or 1280 x 1024.

You're welcome to get it here, with the usual caveats.

18. OLFG Discussion Guide: Text Styling (Template 4)

2008-08-18T08:00:00.005-04:00

The Itracks software support basic text styling: underline, bold, italics, font size & colour, as well as support for bulleted and numbered lists in the BBFG interface. These stylings use HTML tags (such as <> bold < /b > for bold) to display the appropriate styling.

One barrier to greater use of stylings in Itracks is that text stylings made in the original discussion guide (say a Word document) do not survive the transition to a TXT file.

Unless ...

Unless you use a macro that converts styled text in Word to their equivalent HTML tags.

I've adapted a macro that converts the acceptable Word stylings to HTML tags. You can find it along with the other macros for this guide here, in version 4 of the OLFG Discussion Guide, or here, as a BAS file.

Note that styling appears as HTML tags in the OLFG interface, but that it does display correctly in the text stream (see screengrab).

Thanks to Lucas Brachish for the original code.

17. OLFG Discussion Guide: Uploading (Template 3)

2008-08-14T08:00:00.004-04:00

As noted in an earlier post, the Itracks software allows uploading of discussion guides, as long as

they are in the appropriate format (CSV or tab-delimited TXT) and they are
encoded using UTF-8.

Previously, the "simplest" way to do this was to copy and paste the discussion guide table into Excel, export that as a CSV file, and then convert the resulting file into UTF-8 encoding.

As it turns out, it is quite possible to build a Word macro that

Converts the Word discussion guide to tab-delimited text
Saves the text as a plain text file, with UTF-8 encoding*.

You will find this document, version 3 of the OLFG discussion guide, here. It includes the macro file, which you can also download without the document here.

Note that this template should work for all languages, as long as you replace the header line in the guide template with the titles used in that language. The equivalent titles in the French-language interface, for instance, would read (without the quotation marks) "Label", "Texte", "URL", "Description de l'URL", and "Affichable".

* As far as I can determine, using a Visual Basic macro is the only way to access encoding from Word.

16. OLFG Discussion Guide - Structure Formatting (Template 2)

2008-08-11T08:00:00.006-04:00

A legal numbering system ("01.01") for an OLFG discussion guide

ensures that the questions are listed where you expect them to be in the Itracks software

maintains a topic/question structure, which can be useful to visualize the "big picture" in a research project and as timing device for the moderator.

The template introduced in a previous post does provide such a numbering system, using Microsoft Word's own automatic list-generating system: each question number in the "label" field can be easily "promoted" from a question to a topic by using ALT-Left Arrow. Conversely, a topic can be demoted to a question by using ALT-Right Arrow.

The researcher then only has to TAB to the next field to enter the information required by the Itracks software:

The text of the question itself

Any whiteboard or website associated with the question. If there is one, the moderator will have access to a hyperlink to display it

An optional user-friendly description of the URL or whiteboard

A "postable" field that indicates whether the question is, in fact, a comment that should not be shown to participants.

When applied to a topic, a "not postable" entry provides the moderator with a visual clue that we are about to enter a new topic area (see screenshot).

This version of the guide includes a macro that applies appropriate formatting depending on whether the item is a topic or a question, and similarly makes the "postable" field "yes" or "no", as appropriate.

You can download the template here, or the macro file alone, here.

15. OLFG Discussion Guide - Structure (Template 1)

2008-08-07T08:00:00.003-04:00

The Itracks OLFG discussion guide does not recognize structure, the way that the BBFG or a typical face-to-face guide do, with their arrangement of general topics followed by specific questions.

While this is not of great consequence, it may throw off clients who may wonder where "section 5" has gone, once it has been "flattened" to a series of questions. The absence of topics may also focus attention on questions rather on the big picture.

The use of a "legal" numbering system, such as "01.01" is a useful convention. First, it allows questions to be sorted in expected position, as noted in a previous post. And second, by maintaining a structure of topic and question, it helps researchers focus on the objectives of the study.

I have built an OLFG template (see sample screenshot) that uses just such a numbering system. You are welcome to download it here.

Using this template has other benefits. Stay tuned.

14. Itracks Commercials

2008-08-04T08:00:00.000-04:00

Itracks has just released three Flash commercials that provide a good introduction (I think) to their qualitative products.

You can view them below:

Enjoy.

13. Email Accents

2008-07-31T07:35:00.010-04:00

I recall an online study on bilingualism a few years ago in which the accented characters sent from the Itracks emailer to French participants were garbled.

Instead of reading "Merci d'avoir accepté de participer à notre groupe Internet", the subject lines read "Merci d'avoir accept& #233; de participer & #224; notre groupe Internet".

Not an auspicious beginning for a study on and about communications!

Moral 1: Always send a test email to yourself before hitting the "Broadcast Email" button

Moral 2: Never include accented characters in your subject line.

12. OLFG Discussion Guides - Numbering Convention

2008-07-29T19:27:00.004-04:00

Users of the Itracks OLFG software can choose the numbering convention that they will use for their questions. They enter the question "numbers" in a text field called "Label".

Users should be aware, however, of some peculiarities:

The Itracks software - not the user - will determine the order of the questions in the guide

The software does this by sorting the label field in ascending order with sometimes disconcerting results.

For instance, were a user to add a question labelled "A1" to a list of questions that already includes questions "1" through "9", question A1 would be appended to the list (because letters come after numbers).

Similarly, were the user to then add a question labelled "10" to the list above, that question would now find itself after question "1" - not after question "9" (because the single character "1" comes before the two characters "10", and both first characters come before "9").

This is called "literal sorting" (vs. "numerical sorting") and it can be an annoyance when the questions are not where you expect them to be in your online guide.

This is why I have adopted a "legal" numbering system from "01.00" through "99.99". It provides room for 10,000 questions, and they're always in the expected order.

There is another reason for adopting this system... more later.

11. Analysis: Tag Clouds and Wordle

2008-07-23T10:26:00.012-04:00

One promising approach to the analysis of qualitative information is the use of tag clouds.

Tag clouds are a visual representation of user-generated tags, typically using font size to reflect the frequency of the tag. Refinements including "fading" older words and replacing actual words by their root (E.g. "promised", "promises", "promising", and "promise" might be grouped under "promises".)

The folks at Revelation, for example, already use clouds to analyze the tags that researchers have applied to respondent-generated material.

But tag cloud generators can work with any textual material, including transcripts. Bulletin board focus groups, with the sometimes staggering amount of information that they generate, might be prime candidates for this kind of tool.

I ran a tag cloud on two bulletin board projects I conducted, one with nutritionists and another with cheese lovers using the (free) tag cloud generator at wordle.

Check it out: I think this approach holds great promise.

10. MacroExpress: Batch Uploading of Whiteboards

2008-07-18T08:55:00.000-04:00

The Itracks OLFG software provides the moderator with a whiteboard area. There, she can display webpages, and other digital media including purpose-built media such as concept boards, songs, movies, clip art, or participant instructions. These created files must first be uploaded to the Itracks site, almost like uploading the list of participants or uploading the discussion guide.

Almost.

The Itracks software allows moderators to upload the entire discussion guide at one time. Similarly, the software allows moderators to upload all users at once.

Sadly, Itracks does not offer the same batch option for whiteboards, which can only be uploaded one at a time: the researcher must navigate to the upload folder on their computer, select the file to upload, press OK. Repeat for all whiteboards.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were a way to automate this process?

There is, actually.

MacroExpress is a builder of macros, small programs that let you automate repetitive tasks. I use it for a number of different uses on my computer as well as for Itracks projects.

I've created a macro in MacroExpress that:

- goes to a WhiteBoard upload folder on your computer (c:\Itracks\whiteboards)
- asks you how many of the files you want to upload
- then loads up these whiteboards, one at a time, into your Itracks project while you go for a coffee.

The code isn't very elegant, but it works (for me, the usual warnings apply) , and you're welcome to it here.

But you'll have to install your free trial of MacroExpress first.

09. Introducing MacroExpress

2008-07-14T09:54:00.001-04:00

There are some repetitive tasks that a qualitative researcher using the Itracks software must undertake. These include

Uploading whiteboards one at a time
Entering BBFG discussion guides, one question at a time

MacroExpress is a relatively inexpensive ($US39.95) utility that creates mini-programs that automate such repetitive tasks. It can also be used to

Send out bulk emails more easily and consistently by automatically inserting the correct "From Name", "Reply-to address", "Reply-to name", and "Subject" into the appropriate fields
Keep track of and upload personalized invitation and reminder emails
Automatically change the screener questions and prompts and the project settings to my preferred settings and style

More to come on each of those in subsequent posts. MacroExpress offers a 30-day free trial period -- and no, I don't own shares or get a commission!

08. Downloading from International Itracks Accounts

2008-07-11T18:29:00.002-04:00

As noted in a previous post, there are some obstacles to uploading files to the international Itracks accounts when these files are created by Excel. These obstacles can be overcome, by and large, when the researcher ensures that files to be uploaded are first encoded as UTF-8 or UTF-16.

There are challenges with downloading files from international accounts as well, however. Files don't always open in their target applications, and some don't always display accented characters properly. Indeed, some can't even be uploaded back to Itracks.

There are three types of information that can be downloaded from the Itracks software:

User files
Transcripts, and
Discussion guides.

For user files and discussion guides, the options are CSV files or TXT files. For transcripts, the options are CSV, TXT, RTF, and HTM.

I downloaded a sample file for each option and determined that:

The RTF and HTM formats of the transcript opened correctly in their respective applications (Word and Firefox)
User files, TXT. Encoded as UTF-16 by Itracks. Correctly opened by both Notepad and Excel, with accents displaying properly. Can be re-uploaded
User files, CSV. Encoded as ISO 8859. Opened by Excel, but accented characters do not display and are replaced by a question mark. Cannot be uploaded.
Discussion guide, TXT. Encoded as UTF-16. Correctly opened by both Notepad and Excel, with accents displaying properly. Can be re-uploaded without further convertsion
Discussion guide, CSV. Encoded as ISO 8859. Opened by Excel, but accented characters do not display and are replaced by a question mark. Cannot be uploaded.
Transcripts, TXT. Encoded as UTF-16. Correctly opened by both Notepad and Excel, with accents displaying properly.
Transcripts, CSV. Encoded as UTF-8. Accented characters rendered as a ? by Excel. Conversion to UTF-16 makes it intelligible in Excel with accents displaying properly.

Some conclusions:

CSV files are not useful, as currently implemented. They cannot be opened with the accents displaying correctly in their target applications (Excel). Only the transcript CSV file can be made useful by converting it to UTF-16

All TXT files are encoded as UTF-16 and all were opened by their target application (Notepad) with the accents displaying properly. Further, even Excel can open these text files directly, with accents displaying correctly.

Researchers should probably be using TXT files in preference to CSV files, at least for downloading.

07. Uploading files to Itracks - character encoding

2008-07-09T18:16:00.001-04:00

Accented characters can be an issue when using an international Itracks account.

Most of these issues can be resolved by ensuring that all files uploaded to the Itracks software - html whiteboards, user files (CSV or TXT), and discussion guides (CSV or TXT) are encoded using UTF-8 (see Wikipedia for a discussion of UTF-8. Another great discussion is here).

Indeed, in tests I conducted yesterday and today, the international (French) Itracks software only accepted CSV or TXT files created by Excel if they were first encoded as UTF-8 or UTF-16.

The one exception: curiously enough, you can upload a CSV discussion guide created by Excel directly into the Itracks software, even though it is encoded as Windows 1252 (only if it is created entirely in Excel, apparently; if any information is pasted in from another application, the file is saved with ISO-8859!) A user file, Windows 1252 encoding, cannot be uploaded.

Moral: encode to UTF-8 all uploads.

How?

One way to convert a file to UTF-8 encoding is to open it in Notepad, and then save it using the UTF-8 encoding option.

There is another way to convert text files to UTF-8 encoding. And that is by using a nifty (and free) utility called charsc.exe that you can download from the site of the author, Benjamin Kalytta.

The utility automatically detects the current encoding, and provides you with a wide selection of encoding alternatives. It will also work in batch mode, allowing you to convert a number of files at once.

06. Uploading FIles to Itracks - Update

2008-07-09T18:15:00.001-04:00

It appears that uploaded TXT files no longer require quotation marks (except in cases where control characters are part of the field being uploaded).

This is great news and means that neither work-around suggested in a recent post will be necessary in the future.

05. Uploading Files to Itracks

2008-07-08T09:22:00.001-04:00

The Itracks software allows the researcher to upload an entire discussion guide, or all the group participants (and observers) in a project, a significant saving of time and effort over an alternative approach of cutting-and-pasting each field for each record.

For both tasks, the options are to use a CSV (Comma-separated values) or a tab-delimited TXT file. To the best of my knowledge, Microsoft Word does not export to either of these formats, leaving us to work with Excel, which does.

For those who choose to upload a TXT file, there are some hurdles to overcome. Itracks requires quotation marks around all the fields. Excel, however, does not generate TXT files with both a field delimiter and quotation marks.

What to do?

To date, I had been using a rather tedious search-and-replace approach (open the TXT file with Notepad, search-and-replace the tab characters with "TAB", insert a quotation mark at the beginning of the file, and at the end of each line). Tedious & error-prone.

I've discovered a better way. Run a macro (in Excel) that will write selected records to a text file with both tab and quote delimiters.

Microsoft has written such a macro and provides it, as is. You can find it on their support site under the heading Procedure to export a text file with both comma and quote delimiters in Excel.

Wait, you say. we don't want comma and quote, we want tab and quote. No worries. Follow the directions on the Microsoft site to load up the macro in a new worksheet. Once you've pasted in the macro, edit it to replace the line

Print #FileNum, ",";

with

Print #FileNum, chr(9);

CHR(9) is the code for the tab character.

Now, whenever you need to export from Excel to Itracks in a TXT format, select the cells and call up the edited macro to generate the TXT file in the correct format.

Alternatively, you can download this Excel spreadsheet from my site. It contains the macro already loaded. The usual warnings apply.

Don't forget to change the encoding of the file to UTF-8 if you are working in a international-language Itracks account. More on that in another post.

04. The Itracks Dungeons

2008-07-02T10:19:00.000-04:00

Like characters in role-playing games, users of the Itracks software are assigned different roles and abilities.

Participants, for instance, view a screen consisting of a whiteboard, a text display area, and a text entry window. Participants can only write messages to other participants and, privately, to the moderator.

Observers view a similar screen. They can write messages to other observers and to the moderator; these messages remain hidden from participants.

Moderators have a higher level of permissions, and many more behind the scene tools and abilities including viewing private conversations, uploading guides and whiteboards, and sending out invitation letters and reminders, to name but just a few.

Project managers are the wizards of Itracks: in addition to the permissions granted to moderators, they have the ability to directly import discussion guides and whiteboards from one group to another. This is a useful ability that mere moderators do not possess.

Moral: If you are running several group discussions with similar discussion guides and whiteboards, ask to join as a Project Manager rather than as a Moderator.

03. Using Excel to Manage Logins

2008-06-30T15:48:00.001-04:00

The Itracks software guards entry to its online qualitative rooms by having all users (whether moderators, participants, or observers) login by entering:

A moderator-assigned username
A system-generated password
A system-issued room number

While this secure system is appropriate for participants & observers, it can be tedious for a moderators who must frequently visit their project to upload participant names, send invitation emails, load whiteboards, edit the various welcome screens, and so on.

The tediousness increases with the number of groups being run in any one project.

An alternative for moderators is to include in the login URL itself their login details. So, for instance, instead of navigating to the login page and entering "Pierre", the password "S54AU5zhT7", and the room number "13673" in the appropriate boxes, one can send the browser the following detailed URL information: http://login.itracks.com/login/ItracksFrench/loginprompt.cfm?username=Pierre
&accountnum=S54AU5zhT7&roomnum=13673
That will bring the browser to the login page with the fields already populated, a significant saving in time & effort.

And, of course, the detailed URL can then be saved to the links bar, so that frequent visits to each focus group are now just two mouse clicks away.

Adam Bissonnette of Itracks has written an Excel worksheet that even automates the process of generating these detailed URLs. It's called QuickURLs, and you can get his original version here.

Note that by downloading it you agree to use it entirely at your own risk.

Thanks to Adam & Itracks for sharing.

02. Productivity Tools for Itracks Qualitative

2008-06-26T16:52:00.000-04:00

The Itracks qualitative interfaces include Online Focus Groups (OLFG) and Bulletin Board Focus Groups (BBFG).

Both offer a high degree of customization.

Sometimes, managing that "customizability" can be a challenge, especially when a qualitative researcher will be moderating a number of groups.

The challenges multiply when these groups are run in a language other than English, where idiom (and accented characters) are not easily translated.

The most useful tools I have found for managing the Itracks interface are Excel, Word, notepad, and a macro-builder called Macro Express. There's also an indispensable (and free) utility called charsc.exe.

More on all of these and the custom tools they let you create to come.

01. Introduction

2008-06-25T11:47:00.000-04:00

The online qualitative industry appears to be (June 2008) enjoying a resurgence.

Over the past few months, I've completed a number of projects, each made up of a series of international groups.

If this trend (?) continues, productivity tools might help researchers concentrate on the insights from participants rather than on the mechanics of online research.

That's what this blog is all about.