Bespoke Research
We ask questions – lots of questions!
When you first meet us, we’ll ask you questions such as what do you need to know? Who are you trying to reach? And what do you already know? Together, we will develop a project plan.
Our real expertise is in what comes next; framing the questions you want answering in an understandable way. We’re flexible in our approach and will tailor our methods to the needs of your audience. For example, we recognise that normal working hours may not always be the best time to speak to people.
Our neutrality means we are often told things that might not normally be shared directly with you. And whatever intelligence we gather, we know how to translate it so that it is meaningful for you.
We offer a full end-to-end research service but can also provide support with particular parts of any research you might be carrying out yourselves, such has helping you develop a questionnaire or analysing data you have collected and producing a report.
How do we do it
Here are some examples of the techniques we can use when carrying out your bespoke research project.
At Involve North East we pride ourselves in getting to the heart of the issue and can create research packages to suit your needs – just ask!
Case studies are in-depth investigations of a single person, group, event or community.
Our case study method involves reconstructing ‘the case history’ of a single participant or group of individuals and can be used by you in training or to simply tell the story of your service user.
We can help your service users log their experiences using various new methodologies of diary keeping including video blogging, blogging as well as traditional written diaries. This helps to build a picture of experience, emotion and thought across long periods of time.
If there’s someone out there who’s already gathered the information you need we’ll find it and summarise it for you. Desktop research (also known as secondary research) offers a rich vein of information and can be used alone or as a basis for future primary research.
Our focus groups or group discussions involve a small number of people brought together to discuss a particular issue. Through group interaction we gain a depth of understanding, exploring people’s feelings, beliefs and motivations.
We choose the most appropriate settings to hold our focus groups, whether it’s a community centre or corporate venue; and we offer participants support to attend. All our focus groups are conducted in the strictest confidence, giving participants the reassurance that they can speak freely and openly and ensuring we get the most out of each session.
In-depth interviews give participants the opportunity to share their knowledge and give their opinions about a specific topic, in a one-to-one setting. In-depth interviews are held in settings which are comfortable and convenient for participants and are semi-structured in their nature.
They enable our researchers to deeply explore participants’ personal views and experiences, resulting in a rich depth of understanding.
Participatory budgeting directly involves local people in making decisions on the spending and priorities of a specific budget. It is recognised nationally and understood to be good practice and has been used in health, police forces, fire and rescue services, housing and much more. It can be used for small pots of money as well as larger budgets.
We use participatory research techniques to enable people to share their views and discuss issues in an interactive way. Display boards, post-it notes and coloured stickers are just a few of the tools we use, making this technique particularly accessible. Its visual nature also encourages people to take part in the research. We use participatory research techniques in group settings or public places.
We design bespoke questionnaires from large scale service user satisfaction surveys to gathering the views of housebound patients; we can develop a questionnaire that captures the information you need!
We carry out our questionnaires either face to face, over the telephone, by post or online.
We use a range of techniques to achieve your objectives and will advise you on which are the best methods to achieve them.
