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Panel+ 3.1 : Advanced User Tip #4

Find out what your panelists are really thinking - use discussion forums to create a sense of community.

Yes, No, Don't know...
Can the responses to every question you're interested in presenting to your panelists fit inside the confines of a multi-choice question or a single-choice grid? If they can, you're lucky. If not, perhaps you need a less rigid construct for gathering data.

What really makes your panelists tick? How can you get this sort of insight with out asking directly? When a study is run, we group responses together to see the panel's overall thoughts and opinions on a topic, yet we are limited by the questions that we ask. Panelists provide responses to pre-defined questions, and aren't permitted to provide insight beyond the permitted response lists. What if they were allowed to discuss concepts or topics in a more free-form environment that allowed their thoughts to flow?

Take a break from formal surveys...
It's as easy as clicking on the 'forum' tab in the Panel+ authoring tool, and it can be set up in the time it takes you to say "Yes, I would like to create a forum". Just create a forum title, enter your forum topic and hit save. That's it.

Once you start collecting data, you can log back into the administrative site and take as little or as much control as you like. You can view panelist's postings by going to the current posts tab, rearrange posts by time or by username and remove any postings that have offensive content. If you would like to steer discussion in a different direction, you can add a moderator post to re-focus panelists.

About that community thing...
Creating a sense of community will help your response rates immensely. Encourage your panelists to come back and post further messages or just to view the responses from others. Yes, it can be addictive- I'm sure those of you who read the editorial section of a newspaper daily or post your thoughts to a blog can relate. You can even send your panelists a reminder explaining how to log into the portal and re-join the discussion. Panelists can post new comments or view ones that have been added since they were last there.

Make this work for you...
The power is yours. Without a doubt, these panelists are valuable, and the more fun you make the experience, the more potential you have for generating responsive panelists. Overall, this is not only a great panel management tool, in that it entices and encourages respondents to open up, but a great qualitative research tool too.

Posted on May 9, 2005
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