“Beyond the Norm”, Advanced Qualitative Research Masterclass Pre-Conference Workshop
Peter Winters
05 Jul, 2005
REVIEW: "Beyond the Norm"; EphMRA Pre-Conference Workshop
Berlin
21 Jun, 2005
By her own admission, Rachel Lawes is a workaholic and her enthusiasm for her
area of expertise was evident as she led the Advanced Qualitative Masterclass,
in Berlin on 21 June 2005. In the course, the two technical disciplines she
covered were “Semiotics” and “Discourse Analysis”;
and the overall commercial benefit of mastering these skills was to be better
able to understand how it is possible to create desire (for your brand) amongst
your target markets.
At the start of the day, there was a short discussion about what delegates were hoping to learn from the day – and these can be summarised as i) understanding what these techniques are, ii) how they can be implemented, and iii) how best to communicate their benefits to key decision-makers within pharmaceutical companies.
What are they?
Rachel described Semiotics as the study of signs and symbols and has its roots in linguistics and anthropology from the early part of the 20th Century. Discourse Analysis is a somewhat more recent discipline and is the study of talk-in-interaction, evolving from semiotics and social psychology. Although Rachel works in many industry sectors, she had prepared the material so that it was focused on the pharmaceutical industry.
During the course, delegates were absorbed by many, many, many concepts which are used within these disciplines. To give a sense of the concepts presented, we picked out three which we found particularly interesting.
- Concept 1 – “Where there is choice there is meaning”.
- The point here is that it is only relevant to conduct semiotics and discourse analysis of material if there has been choice in its creation (why green was chosen rather than blue, and so on).
- Concept 2 – “Binary oppositions”.
- The notion here is that it is only possible to understand something if it is in opposition to something else (e.g. the concept of “women” would have no meaning without the opposite concept of “men”). This would not be the negative form – i.e. the opposition to “effective” would be “gentle” (and not “ineffective”); the opposition to “scientific” would be “natural” (and not “unscientific”).
- Concept 3 – “Up the Mountain” or “Down the Pan”.
- We understand the world through myths formed by our culture, our personality and so on. Rachel articulated two opposing myths that might be held with regard to healthcare; one was an “Up the Mountain” view whereby everything was getting better and then she described an opposite “down the pan” view. It possible to support, persuasively, both “myths” by the selection of different evidence and arguments.
Indeed, we have just illustrated another point which Rachel made during the course – the “3-part list”. Discourse Analysts will recognise that arguments will appear much more complete if they are supported by 3 elements. If for example, you say that a drink made you feel “strange, weird and odd” – that would convey a much stronger message than just saying it made you feel “strange”. Similarly, providing a course summary in 3 parts, as has been done in this article, should give a sense that we were paying complete attention to Rachel’s presentations!
How to implement ?
The afternoon was dedicated to syndicated sessions with delegates split into two groups. One group undertook a semiotic review of various adverts whilst the other group considered various texts (such as a scare-mongering article about Seroxat and various patient descriptions of their conditions) using their newly-taught skills in Discourse Analysis.
These sessions gave delegates a sense of how it is possible to deconstruct the meaning of advertising material and brand messages, and also, how to go about an analysis of motivations. Indeed, it is possible to construct quite elaborate theories in this way, which may go far beyond what the data can reliably support. In this respect it was interesting to see Rachel, the expert, at work. She was ready to express opinions, or hypotheses, about how we one could interpret a particular set of data. She was also open-minded as to alternative explanations and, overall, was very keen to emphasize that all conclusions should be evidence-based; considering both the original data sets and research literature.
The implementation of such qualitative techniques would imply that there would be less emphasis on the standard qualitative, interviewer-led, in-depth interviews and groups in favour more eclectic data collection methodologies. The data for Discourse Analysis is gathered from many different sources, including from patients forums, blogs, observing doctors interact and so on.
In the 2001 EphMRA “Online Research Revolution” pre-conference workshop, there had been a debate on the motion of “qualitative research is not suited to the net” and few had disagreed with this motion. Yet, armed with the tools of Discourse Analysis, surely the set-up of online patient discussion forums could provide very useful qualitative source material!
How to communicate the benefits?
Perhaps the hardest task is to work out how to communicate the benefits of these approaches to decision-makers in pharmaceutical companies. What should the elevator-pitch be for Semiotics and Discourse Analysis? One thing to mention is that these techniques have particular application for projects which deal with packaging, advertising and communications. Otherwise, no firm conclusions were reached at the course, as far as we are aware. Perhaps a Discourse Analysis study of pharmaceutical executives could help shed light on this!
This course review has been written by the convenors.
Peter Winters, Xander Raymakers
This article appeared in the EphMRA Post-Conference Newsletter 2005. Downloadable versions of EphMRA newsletters are available from their Website.
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