Projective and Enabling Techniques

People are complicated. The conflict between our real self and our ideal self creates dissonance in our minds. Our words and actions are often shaped by how we want others to perceive us. We do not always say what we mean, or mean what we say.

The reluctance to say what we really think stems from the fear that our thoughts might not be politically, socially or intellectually correct. To avoid embarrassment, and preserve our self-esteem, we use defence mechanisms, and become experts in making ourselves sound rational.

Driven by the need to preserve our image, our responses are mostly stereotypic; they are shaped by how we want others to perceive us. Only occasionally do we express our heartfelt desires and feelings.

To circumvent these barriers, qual researchers employ a wide range of projective and enabling techniques that reduce the gravity of the subject, by viewing the topic from another perspective. They facilitate a deeper exploration of a person’s feelings, and bring forth emotions into the open in a way that she feels comfortable with; enabling researchers to understand in greater detail how consumers relate to a subject.

This chapter covers a wide range of projective techniques including word association, third party questioning, sentence completion, personification, brand mapping, drawing and collage, bubble drawings, role-playing, and laddering.

The bubble drawing technique invites participants to fill speech and thought into “bubbles” on a cartoon showing an imaginary situation relevant to the research. For example:

Laddering is an interviewing technique designed to trace the underlying attitudes, feelings and emotions about a subject. It begins with a simple question, followed repeatedly with questions about that response. For example:

Laddering can take the respondent from the functional to the emotional plane. It can help peel off the outer objective layers and delve deeper into the subjective truth — the emotions and the values that are driving behaviours. The previous example for instance, reveals the respondent’s anxiety of raising a child in a highly competitive world.

The technique helps to get to the crux of an issue or problem. It can however be intrusive and stressful for the respondent, and should therefore be sparingly used and administered with care.

Body Language

Body language is the language of body posture, gestures, facial expressions and eye movements. It reveals an individual’s state of mind, his or her attitudes, feelings and intentions, and personality traits such as extroversion, introversion, aggression, greed and rivalry. Indeed the language is so rich that researchers claim 60 to 70% of all meaning is derived from body language “... There is no word as clear as body language, once one has learned to read it.”

Body language is of immense importance in qual. It greatly enriches its content, and empowers researchers to read their respondents’ minds. Qualitative researchers need to acquire expertise in the language, so that they can employ it to unlock and read minds, and grasp the full meaning of the messages conveyed to them. The knowledge of body language also helps the moderator to better manage the group engagement and interaction.

Body language is in part innate and instinctive, partly taught and partly imitative. We are experts in using it; we send and receive non-verbal signals all the time, sometimes consciously and sometimes subconsciously. However even though our brains are “programmed” in the use of the language, we are not as capable of reading or interpreting it. Indeed when we try to understand it, it is almost like learning a foreign language.