A Beginner’s Guide to Online Journaling
When you think about online qualitative research, what comes to mind? Probably a bulletin board focus group or webcam focus group, which are among the most common online tools researchers are utilizing. While these methodologies can provide rich, in-depth data for your clients, there’s another one you should consider adding to your toolbox—online journaling.
What Is Online Journaling?
Unlike a bulletin board focus group, which might last three days, online journaling projects most often consist of longer-term, immersive research studies that allow researchers to understand consumer behaviors as they occur. Online journaling is similar to traditional diary studies, but participants (20-40 in a typical study) use blogs to post their thoughts—and photos and videos—about a particular research topic. They might post once a day for a one-to-two week project or a few times a week for longer projects. Participants answer moderator assignments and respond to stimuli. An online moderator can expect to do limited probing during the project.
In addition to being convenient for the participants, who can log in whenever they’re ready to post something, being online makes the entire process easier for the researchers and clients, as well, as they can log in whenever they’d like to view the responses.
Why Blogging for Qualitative Research
• Lends itself well to exploring a research topic over a longer period of time.
• Combines well with other formats…it can be used a stand-alone research tool or can be part of a mixed-methodology study. For example, you could combine online journaling with weekly teleconferences.
• Lets the researcher take a more passive approach to the interactions.
• Provides a level of freedom, which leads participants to provide all kinds of incidental feedback.
The Benefits of Online Research Software
While anyone can set up a free blog using a service like WordPress or TypePad, there are limitations. For starters, blogs aren’t private – even password-protected ones can be accessed publicly. And since they’re free, they can’t be easily customized. The biggest obstacle is that there’s no easy way to compile the responses from the 20-40 individual blogs.
Online research software like QualJournal removes these limitations. It supports customizable page designs. It offers complete security, confidentiality and a high level of anonymity – no “group think.” And it provides research-specific controls and functions, including automated assignments and reminders, and participant progress indicators that highlight incomplete activities or assignments.
The online research software also offers comprehensive backend reporting. Here are some of the reporting features of QualJournal:
• It consolidates all entries into one feed, which you can export as a PDF or Excel file.
• There’s a client-accessible reporting page.
• You can view entries by participant, by date or by assignment.
• A reporting archive stores previously generated transcripts, simplifying analysis on long-term projects.
When to Use Online Journaling
Online journaling has several uses in qualitative research. Here are a few:
• Diaries of product or service usage over time.
• Following an experience over time (e.g., vacation).
• Recording behavior prior to in-person research.
• Collecting video or pictures of participant viewpoints.
Find out more about the benefits of our immersive research software, QualJournal.
