Research: our signature services
We've been conducting research in schools and universities for over 20 years and understand them better than anyone. Here are some of the most common ways our clients ask us to help. We can offer a full service on any of these, or just do the parts you need us to. We're also really good with numbers and school stats: ask us.
Online focus groups
Our online focus groups offer the best of face-to-face discussions, with all the advantages and convenience of remote login. They’re ideal for unpicking what teachers or lecturers really think and feel about a product or service, and for exploring attitudes, drivers, motivators and opportunities.
Online focus groups take place through a combination of teleconferencing and accessing a shared online ‘meeting room’, and typically involve 6-8 educationalists.
Online feedback forms/ resource or product evaluations
Like online surveys, these forms are built in house using our bespoke survey building tools. It guides the respondent through a series of questions, routing them down different question pathways where relevant.
The benefit of gathering this feedback via online form, rather than during an interview (for example) is that participants have the time to reflect on their answers, explore the resource/product at their leisure, and check their files to review the resources currently used.
Online survey
All surveys are built using our bespoke survey building service, and are carefully designed with branching questions and auto responsive answer options to ensure that the respondent’s route through the survey is logical and efficient and that responses are valid. Schoolzone panel members are familiar with the ‘look and feel’ of our surveys, and trust Schoolzone to design surveys that reflect teachers’ needs, concerns and priorities. This, along with our incentive structure based on individual payments for participants, ensures a robust sample and high completion rate.
Online discussion forum
Our research forums are lively, robust and in depth asynchronous chat forums in which participants are paid to express their views. Participation is on an invitation-only basis, and the forum is password protected, both for the purposes of confidentiality and to ensure that the data gathered is high quality and from an appropriately profiled audience.
Clients can develop their research during the course of data gathering, by adding questions having read responses to earlier ones, so they are great if you're looking for a flexible research option.
Telephone interviews
Telephone interviews are a cost effective and ideal approach for gathering a combination of qualitative and quantitative data from a pre-recruited panel of respondents. We often receive hundreds of applications for interview-based research, so we build in strategic questions to the application form, meaning that you get strong quantitative data alongside interviews. Interviews follow a structured, pre-agreed script, with a combination of closed and open-ended, exploratory questions.
We can scale the size of the project to suit your objectives and budget, and we are equally happy carrying out 10 interviews or 200!
Please call us: 01242 262906