At AH, we have different people who take on specific research tasks because they have built their skills on those tasks. Let me take you on a typical workflow for a qualitative analysis task for a client. I’ll walk you through the process using the Nigeria-Egypt-Morocco research I shared a few days ago on our social media pages. This research was undertaken in 7 steps.
Step 1: The client sends in a research task brief. This contains all the instructions on the task to be executed. It contains the research aim, who should be interviewed, the interview questions, how the interview should be carried out (the medium), the expected outcomes.
Step 2: The lead consultant scans through the task and decides on which consultant/researcher to assign specific tasks. Here about three to four researches are involved.
Step 3: A research meeting is held where the research aim, objectives, expected outcomes, interviewee questions, and expected deliverables are discussed. This meeting involves a lot of brainstorming and takes a long time. It is a strategic meeting and real research learning takes place here.
Step 4: Researcher 1 sources for interviewees that fits the specification in the research brief. This researcher is trained in the art of persuasion and is a skilled communicator. After finding a suitable interviewee, the researcher seamlessly hands over the conversation to the interviewer (Researcher 2).
Step 5: Researcher 2 undertakes the interview at the scheduled time. This researcher is skilled at probing and time management. The researcher also has a lot of humour, patience and would not take one-word responses like “No” or “Yes” for an answer. Using the right drawing out information from the interviewee skillfully. After a successful interview, the researcher hands over the recording to the transcriber (Researcher 3).
Step 6: Researcher 3 transcribes the interview with the aid of transcription software (e.g Otter.ai) and commences editing. This researcher possesses impressive listening skills and great command of English language writing (especially writing in literary style). If we are contracted to analyze the data, Researcher 4 comes in.
Step 7: Researcher 4 receives the clean edited transcript and using a customized tool developed by AH, picks out the relevant codes from responses, categorizes similar codes in themes, and define the themes in line with the research question or objectives. This is then forwarded to the lead consultant.
Final Step: The lead consultant (Qualitative Analysis) scans through the entire work, makes necessary corrections and sends the following deliverables to the client:
> Signed consent forms
> Audio recordings
> Interview Transcripts
> Analysis output
The interesting part of the entire process is that most of these researchers do not need to be in the same physical space. Most (if not all) of the meetings and tasks are done virtually. Some also do not need to have a university education to be part of the research team. Read the workflow again and try to identify the researcher(s) whose task does not require a university degree?
At Academic Hive, we take every research task with care because we understand the seriousness of your research work. Wouldn’t you rather consult our expertise?
Send us an email today info@academichive.com
