Less is more

Editor's note: Kai Fuentes is the president and founder of Ebony Marketing Systems.

There’s a common saying amongst researchers that we “put 20 pounds of sugar in a 5-pound bag” – that we have this superpower to expand the allotted time of our research to contain every question the client needs to have answered. We always try to fit in more.

After trying to fit in more for many years, I’ve made an interesting discovery: More questions don’t always equal more answers. In fact, in recent years I’ve had greater success with a less-is-more approach.

Let’s be candid: clients certainly won’t request that type of approach but it can work even with large-scale projects. For example, we recently partnered with 1,000 Days, a global organization that seeks to improve nutrition for women and young children throughout the world, to explore current perceptions about the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) dietary and nutrition guidelines for birth parent and child during pregnancy through the end of the second birthday, known as the 1,000-day window. The research objectives were to understand awareness and attitudes towards the CDC recommendations and then share those results with the advocacy community.

The 1,000 Days study covered three cohorts of Black people: pregnant, postpartum who breastfed and postpartum who were not breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is a judgment-laden topic with increased sensitivity in the Black community related to awareness and education. 

A sweeping scope, CDC guidelines, three nationwide cohorts and a sensitive topic – there’s a lot packed into this project.

Trust established

First, it is important to note that trust had already been established with the client. It enabled a “less is more” project design of four phases of nine in-depth interviews (IDIs) nationwide – three mothers from each segment per phase. Time was built into the design so that each phase could inform the next phase – this “each one, teach one” approach succeeded by limiting the number of participants per phase.

Each interview was an extended interview of 90 minutes vs. one hour. This is an example of “more is more” – the participant gives more time but in turn receives more breathing room. The extended time was not an opportunity to add more. Some of you are already doing the math in your head – “I could do 20 questions” – you don’t need more than two minutes per question, right? No. This time allowed experimentation with various questions. After the first phase, it became the accommodating carrier of the respondents’ lived experiences.

The knowledge gained in the first phase revealed that the discussion guide could be boiled down to four questions to be used in the next three phases:

  1. How did you find out you’re pregnant? This first question kicked off the storytelling. They proceeded from there, covering many days of the pregnancy and after – often answering planned probes in their own voices without much prompting other than head nods.
  2. How did you plan to give birth to your baby? The birthing plan turned out to be another floodgate-opening question. This naturally revealed the choice of doctor or midwife, making it organic to probe if the doctor or midwife was a person of color, which became a key insight. This question also naturally draws out the influence of culture, family, social media and other sources of information.
  3. Talk about your weight, blood pressure, pre-diabetes during the pregnancy. Had a probe ready here about how they found out if there were issues. Also, probed here about “How would you describe your food choices during your pregnancy?” Then it felt very conversational to gently delve into this area further by asking “What’s the difference before you were pregnant?” Again, the moderator had the handy guide of probes to check-off during the interviews but the flow of the story belonged to the interviewee, allowing for more details that were volunteered vs. probed such as exercise during pregnancy.
  4. Did you consider breastfeeding your baby? Why or why not? Probes as needed: “What did you understand about benefits/problems for breastfeeding for parent and baby?” “Where did you gain this information?” By this time, we’ve gained her trust and established that she’s talking to someone who will simply listen, not interrupt to get through a lengthy discussion guide of questions.

Notice that the “why” question comes last, deep into the interview after a conversational trust has been established. Researchers are taught you need to ask why. Maybe even five times. Clients seem to especially like being able check off the “why” question box when listening to interviews. But if you look up the five whys, you’ll find it’s classified as an interrogative technique. Interrogation, not conversation. 

Years ago, an interviewee challenged my thinking on asking why. During this interview, I had a client buzzing “ask her why, ask her why” in my earpiece like a mosquito. And I was. The interviewee answered a question and then said “And now you’re going to ask me why.” Busted. I had set up a predictable question pattern that was yielding predictable answers. 

As moderators we need to be less predictable. Ask interviewees to tell us their truths, without anticipating “here comes the why.” This predictability is taking both you and your respondent out of the moment. It’s now becoming a checklist to get through vs. a respectful place to share their story.

I’m not saying to never ask why. Rather, be mindful about where and when it’s used. Questions help people formalize their thoughts, like bullet points in their minds. Those points then become naturally embellished with when, where and why. As respondents in the breastfeeding study answered the question about how they found out they were pregnant, they naturally provided insights into why they became pregnant. Were they trying? Not trying? Were they doing IVF? That “how” question, with its natural evocation of a timeline of events, helped unfold their story. It made it easier for the respondents to answer and avoided the extreme awkwardness of asking, “Why did you become pregnant?”

Not their voice

One of the goals of research is to have that moment when the end client sees life through the eyes of the respondent, the same feeling you get when reading a compelling book and suddenly find yourself stirring a steaming groundnut stewpot in an African village. You don’t even know what a groundnut is but you’re having that experience. Researchers strive for that type of story or rich quote, yet so often when reading the transcript, that great quote you recalled is actually your probe or summation – the respondent agreed but it’s not their words. It’s not their voice.

As unnatural as it feels, the solve is asking fewer probes, chasing fewer rabbits. In another study, we partnered with the Black Women’s Health Imperative (BWHI) to identify proactive strategies that companies can employ to address racism in the workplace, thereby sustaining or improving the overall wellness of Black women. We had completed the quantitative phase of 3,963 online surveys of working Black women and were conducting the qualitative phase of 40 in-depth interviews for the specific purpose of stories that illuminated the quantitative findings.

When I’m designing qualitative that’s supposed bring the quantitative findings to life, I take a very critical look at my discussion guide. If that guide, packed with questions and probes, could work as a survey, that’s not what I need. My experiences have taught me to keep refining to get to four questions.

I also confirmed, through ongoing discussion with the team at BWHI, that they did not need a “wall of quotes” to re-quantify the findings. Instead, they wanted a deck of voices with three or four quotes for each topic area. So that the insight that wellness is a solitary practice for Black women can be gleaned from hearing “Music feeds my soul. That's how I get through every day. Even in silence, I need to hear rhythm. It could be the sound of the knife on the cutting board." Or feeling a Black woman’s workplace invisibility when she says “It was near Christmastime and this white woman brought little gifts for everyone’s desk. There were six of us. I'm the only Black one. She forgot mine.” Or wanting job benefits communicated more fully: “The HR person could be more intentional about Black people, like, ‘Let me ask if they know about this; there are options to help you.’ A Black woman [in my office] just had a baby. The HR person could ask her how she’s doing, review options with her so that if she needs any help, she can go there.”

Three keys to finding more with less 

The BWHI interviews produced touchstone vignettes that lingered. Here are three keys we used:

Listen for when the interviewee is speaking fast – and resist the urge to join in that intensity. When the words are coming out quickly, that’s a cue to just listen. People speed up their speech when they are emotional. Hear them and receive that story, that emotion. Their words can become the pivot point of the research report. The slide that you can put up and let the client sink into. The quote or story that becomes what people remember, refer to and use as motivation for action.

Keep that probe in your head for a bit longer. Fewer probes, more patience. The interviewee will get there because it’s part of their story. Which gets to less-is-more in the backroom: On sensitive topics, the standard at our firm is only the interview and interviewee are on the IDI. This eliminates the frantic text, Slack or chatroom pestering by the client begging the interviewer to ask the probe. The client can watch a recording later and hear all their questions being answered.

The nine-second pause. Another clue not to probe is when the interviewee goes silent. Be with her in her silence. Nine seconds – pregnant pause; easy to remember: nine = pregnant. This pause is the difference between a game show host and a moderator. If you’re a game show host, dead air is bad because viewers will turn the channel. If you’re a moderator, silence is the way to show people you’re staying with them. To practice this, first become aware of how long you allow for pauses in interviews. Watch your transcripts. Look at the time markers. How close are you to nine seconds? (Longer may be even better with more introverted interviewees.) Then practice in conversations. Silently count to nine after someone finishes a thought before you chime in. With practice, it becomes habit.

Fewer probes, more grace

One additional benefit of having fewer questions/probes is more interviewee trust. In the 1,000 Days breastfeeding project, one woman broke down in the middle of the IDI. She was crying. A LOT. For a time it seemed like she might not stop. But that’s okay, because she obviously needed to get something out and that was one of the project goals. She just kept apologizing. She said, “I just feel so alone and not worthy.” She was breaking my heart so I asked if we could just take some deep breaths together. I said, “Right now, in this meeting, you are not alone.” The comfort I could offer was to be there.

As the interviewer, you may need that grace for yourself because an interviewee’s stories can also affect you. In this instance, the woman was crying about her mom, who was not very supportive. That was triggering to me as it brought back my own memories. Resist the urge to say, “I’ve been there.” That’s dangerous even with a friend because people aren’t asking you to tell your story; they need someone just to listen. Stay in the interviewer role and be the vessel for their story to be heard.

Moderator self-care

“Less is more” also applies to you, how you care for your moderating self. Here’s the “pace of grace” I use, especially on topics that I know will result in highly charged, emotional interviews: only do two interviews a day if they are an hour, one a day if they are 90 minutes. And don’t do them back-to-back. Now, for consumer research such as talking about lipstick or laundry detergent it’s fine to do 12 p.m., 1:15 p.m., etc., as these are not sensitive topics.

For the breastfeeding study, there was one interview in the morning and one in the early afternoon. I purposefully chose those times for me as well as the interviewee. In the morning, I am super fresh and can sufficiently recharge before the early-afternoon session. Or you can do one in the morning and one in the evening. If I do an interview at 10 a.m. then another at 4 p.m., I’ve lived a whole other lifetime in between. With my husband, my kids, my clients or my team. That helps me to move on from what I heard in the morning interview, so I can come to the second interview with a clear mind. Plan for your buffer.

For the Black Women’s Health Imperative, the interviews were divided across three Black women moderators. While 40 conversations are doable for one or two moderators, it was more self-respecting to divide these intense conversations among three. In this manner, our firm was also able to model one of the solutions we heard from the quantitative: Please relieve the one Black woman from having to speak for all, from being the “burden bearer.” The full weight of the interviews did not fall on one of us, nor did the responsibility of synthesizing the data. We could check in every Friday night, like a happy hour. We would talk about our experiences doing the interviews. Most of the final report stories were identified in these weekly debriefs. If a story was moving to us, as culturally sensitive moderators, it was going to be moving to those reading the report.

Less judging, more respect

Moderators work hard to show up in a nonjudgmental way. You are going to hear stories that startle you. There are all kinds of things that happen to people. Sometimes it’s a card they were dealt. Sometimes it’s a card they played. But regardless, they need grace and empathy. This approach has helped for doing research across many topics: people living with HIV/AIDS; people with drug and alcohol addictions; sex workers. 

How do I practice this? (Because it does take practice.) Before each interview, I take deep breaths, understanding and retelling myself that this is somebody’s mother, brother, sister. This person could be my family member, my neighbor, my best friend. I affirm that I am going to treat this interview with the utmost respect and avoid judgment so that their story is heard. Because their story is important. 

To be candid, not reacting in a judging way can be challenging. You don’t go into an interview planning to hear triggering things. I’ve heard racial slurs in interviews. Did the person not notice that I’m Black? Can they not see who they’re talking to? How do I remove myself from that? Again, I take a moment to remind myself it’s about empathy and being nonjudgmental. Understanding that even though they are using these terms, or they feel a certain way, that’s their story. They still have the right for their story to be heard. 

Take the chance

Some clients and topics won’t give you the space to try ideas like the ones I’ve shared but if you’re told “We trust you to design this project,” take the chance and run with it! Reframe that 40-IDI project from a slog to an opportunity; chunk it into phases, experiment, learn. Keep your approach fresh.

Finally, I’d like to close this article in the same simple way I close interviews, groups, presentation and workshops: I thank you for showing up, for your energy and for your time.