Using Qualitative Research to Understand the Economy: A Toolkit

Language Matters

• Language is important in designing qualitative research. The words we use matter, and ensuring those words are clear and accurate to lived experiences helped get the best response. For example, the phrase “gig work” meant different things to different people. We asked directly about online-platform-based work by name to ensure clarity.

Bias Shows Up in Different Ways

• Interviews helped us challenge assumptions behind questions and ensure question neutrality. In some questions, the frame assumed certain factors were being realized for participants navigating the labor market, i.e., workers were benefiting from reduced degree requirements in job posts; we learned that this was a leading question and adjusted our frame accordingly. We changed the question frame from, “How are you benefiting from employer practices?” to “How are you experiencing changes employers are making in their hiring practices?”
• Some topics, like unemployment insurance, carry stigma on their own. We worked with participants and external experts to frame language in a way that did not reinforce negative narratives. For example, as opposed to asking, “Who received unemployment insurance and what was the effect of these dollars?” we asked if participants found that “stimulus or unemployment insurance impacted their decisions around work and if so, how?”

Process Clarity is Important

• Participant interviews also helped us improve the user experience by highlighting places where our instructional language was unclear. We adjusted invitation language as well as guidance for participants as to how to join the call, as well as post-session actions to locate gift cards and get in contact with project leads.

Leveraged Existing Partnerships

• We chose a convenience sampling model, working with workforce organizations to connect us to the target population. We worked through trusted local Federal Reserve staff to do initial outreach to referring agencies. The people who led communication were closest to that community’s work and had connections with those partners.
• This approach helped build trust by working through a trusted organization through which the participant had existing relationships.

Created Intake Survey for Participation

• The target population for this research were nondegree-holding prime-age workers or job seekers. We created an intake survey that ensured participants met qualifying criteria, as well as collected demographics and other background characteristics.

Reinforce Informed Consent

• Informed consent was clear, concise, and easy to understand and allowed participants to opt out of the research engagement at any time.
• We reinforced what questions would be asked, what data would be collected, and how those data would and would not be used during every touchpoint with the participants.
• This intentionality around where participants could opt-in or opt-out of all parts of the process created a sense of safety and trust among the participants, which allowed for more candid and honest conversations.

Identify Partners for Recruitment

• Work with organizations that are already serving the types of research participants you want to reach; this allows for more control than using public forums to recruit participants.
• For example, if your objective is to understand the experiences of a specific population, such as residents of a certain neighborhood or parents of young children or workers in a particular occupation, then a more targeted approach to recruiting participants would be warranted.

Be Transparent and Responsive to Partner Organizations to Build and Maintain Trust

• Assess what actions you could take to build the necessary trust and create shared agreements on how engagement will be conducted, how data will be used, and what data will be shared. Seek out relationships with organizations that have the trust of the target population.

Be Clear with the Research Participants on Confidentiality

• Ensure research participants understand what you are asking of them and how their information will and will not be used.
• These actions will develop trust with participants who may or may not be familiar with your organization or the purpose of your research or engagement. Explain how you will protect their confidentiality.

Used Expert Facilitators

• We identified external facilitators with a background in community-engaged research and experience facilitating discussion on sensitive and difficult subjects, ensuring questions did not unnecessarily traumatize, or retraumatize, participants.
• We approached this project with a trauma-informed lens that shaped how we asked questions and empathetically listened to participants’ accounts of their experiences of being frontline workers during the pandemic.

Set Norms for the Conversation

• The focus groups were opened by establishing conversation expectations and ground rules. For example, this included fostering a sense of safety for participants, reminding participants to respect one another’s confidentiality, and restating informed consent and participants’ ability to opt out of questions as they saw fit.

Create a Safe Space

• Only critical staff from the project and facilitation team were invited to each session as to not overwhelm participants with additional listeners during the discussion.
• We created a script with intentional language for facilitators, which included messages acknowledging that hard experiences were shared by participants, particularly as some of the experiences shared were so personal, and in some cases, traumatic.

Open Each Meeting Establishing the Privacy of the Conversation

• Explain the purpose of the project and that all answers are voluntary so participants do not feel pressured to share experiences that they want to remain private. Ask others to keep the comments shared in that space private.

Consider the Ways Participants May Have Experienced Trauma and How That Trauma May Impact Them

• Make space for people to choose to participate or not, depending on their level of comfort.
• Acknowledge that trauma impacts emotional and physical well-being and that some questions may cause discomfort, even if that is not the intent.

Establish Norms for the Conversation That All Participants Agree To

• These may include things like defer judgment, do not interrupt one another, and pass the mic so that all participants get a chance to answer questions. These norms help establish the feel of the conversation and how participants will treat one another.

Be Mindful of the Balance in the Conversation

• Recognize where there may be intimidation factors affecting participants’ interest and comfort in engaging in the conversation, and adjust accordingly. Only have critical people involved in the information gathering to avoid making participants feel they are “on stage” to share their experiences or perspectives.

Hire Facilitators Trained in Community-Engaged Research or Trauma-Informed Facilitation

• They have experience creating a safe and supportive environment for individuals who might have experienced trauma in the past.
• Acknowledge and thank participants who choose to disclose an experience that may have been traumatic. Most important, be human and make space for the humanity of all participants.

Partnership is a Two-Way Street

• We asked a lot of our community partners with respect to support for recruitment, leveraging the trust their endorsement of this research would lend to garner participant engagement, and found that we could provide our community partners with value in return. The themes shared with community partners offered meaningful real-time insights and showed how participants were willing to provide their expertise to speak of their experiences in meaningful and respectful ways.

Participants Value in Sharing Their Experiences and Shaping the Research Findings

• Through the focus group experience, participants noted that they are rarely asked to share their point of view and found value in being asked about their experiences and offered a space to share their personal perspectives.

• We recognized that focus group participants were valuable interpreters and validators of the findings, which strengthened the research output. We reviewed data analysis findings before publishing the research to confirm their experiences were accurately described and allowed them space to reflect on language used in the publication. For example, participants shared their preference for being referred to as “workers in low-wage roles” as opposed to “low-wage workers” and preference for terms like “perseverance” over “resilience” in how their actions were described in the research.