Jenny Fletcher explains some ways to gain the most from an online community, through treating participants as individuals and tailoring research methods to their preferences
A manifesto for getting the best
from online communities
The
recent General Election once again brought healthcare to the fore of UK
politics, this time with an unprecedented 7 health manifestos for Health Care
Professionals (HCPs) and the general public to consider. It also saw widespread
use of social media channels by politicians to communicate their manifestos, and
by the general public in expressing their reaction.
At a qualitative
research level, a self-funded, online qualitative community approach was
employed comprising 25 HCP Payers to explore and gain insight into their views
on a broad range of topical healthcare issues including NICE, the Cancer Drugs
Fund, biosimilars, the impact of Digital on pharma and the NHS in general. Drawing
on this and over 120 similar online healthcare communities run internationally,
three core principles have emerged that work equally well with HCPs and
patients for getting the best out of online qualitative communities.
(1)
Treat them as people not participants In order
to truly understand the motivations that lie beneath someone’s professional
persona and get to what really matters to them personally, particularly when
talking about contentious issues such as future funding of treatments, it is essential
to interact with them as people. It is then possible to break the traditional
rules of market research and start asking provocative questions, increasingly
challenge thinking and consider what makes them tick as people, including what buttons
need to be pushed in order to get the most out of them.
It is also important, where
possible, to review any previous research that has been conducted with this
audience, both online and offline, to identify what drives them.
This is a
prerequisite for ensuring that the subsequent tasks designed for the community
are fit for purpose in delivering genuine insight. Interventional Cardiologists
for example, tend to be competitive and motivated by their own personal
success. So, by incorporating competitive ideation tasks that appeal to their
ego, they can be motivated by the chance to win the title ‘best brains in the
community’. This could take the form of a ‘Dragons Den’ style group task, where
each is asked to come up with a new marketing message for a certain product, which
is then rated by the community.
In the case of patients with rare diseases however,
it’s much more important to build trust between the community manager and the
individual, so private reflection ‘Confession Booth’ style tasks work much
better, with plenty of personal encouragement and feedback.
Our election
example revealed that Payers, despite having a serious role to play in their
involvement of developing guidelines and funding of treatments, also have a dry
sense of humour and a surprising playfulness. A ‘Family Fortunes’ task therefore
was particularly effective. Here the Payers were asked to imagine they were all
part of the ‘community family’ and asked to predict answers to open ended
questions drawn from ‘100 people like you’. By framing it in this way it meant
that they ‘conferred’ with their ‘family’, taking the thoughts of other Payers in
the community into consideration, thus giving a holistic, fully rounded
opinion.
“I liked the opportunity to take
serious subjects forward in a fun way” (2)
Research team led but powered by the people When it
comes to online communities, what comes out depends very much on what goes in,
with this applying equally to community managers and participants alike. While
having a clearly defined agenda and set of objectives on behalf of your pharmaceutical
clients is essential, it is equally vital to adopt a democratic approach which gives
the participants ownership of the community. This is because people need to
feel that they are listened to, that their opinions have been taken into
account and that they matter. The more ownership there is, the more engagement
and motivation to contribute further and open up more.
In our
election community, Payers were given a space to post their own topics of
interest in addition to those presented to them. It was then possible to
observe which gained the most traction amongst their peers and continue this. So,
when a Payer added an article from Sky news about the ‘hidden’ army of
pharmacists to ease GP pressure, an article which generated considerable
interest, a quick poll was created to facilitate further discussion to
understand whether the community felt this would be a viable solution to ease
pressure on GP surgeries – 88% felt it would.
“I was impressed by the expertise
and how willing many were to share their passions and vision” (3)
Keep it current It is
however important to always leave spaces for ‘unknowns’ to crop up, for example
any new clinical trial data that emerges, exclusive papers presented at
conferences, disease awareness campaigns amongst patients etc. As well as
keeping the discussion current, it helps facilitate increased engagement as
well as providing insight into how opinions may evolve and develop as new
information comes to light and is processed/discussed.
In our election
community, Payers for example were invited to comment on the televised political
debates as they happened and to share their thoughts on what had been said in
relation to the NHS. Twitter-style tasks where they were asked to condense
their thoughts down to one succinct 140 character tweet and create their own
hashtags also worked well with this group because it strongly appealed to their
sense of satire and direct and cutting style. “I found it interesting because
the topics are current and it made me re-read the 5 year forward plan… bring on
the next one!” The findings from this Payer
Politics case study are published in a series of 4 summaries which can be found
at http://www.cellohealthinsight.com/work/payer-politics/
About the author
Jenny Fletcher is Director of Digital at Cello Health
Insight. She can be contacted at JFletcher@cellohealth.com.
This feature was first published on Pharmaphorum on 19 June 2015
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