Select the best qualitative approach for your objectives

Explore the qualitative approaches and understand the high, medium or low value across different investment objectives.

Strategy

Explore problems and identify opportunities

Qualitative research can contribute to understanding problems' contexts and root causes and identifying user needs.

  • What are the unmet needs and other demand-side factors?
  • Who are the stakeholders and other audiences for this work?
  • What are the diverse contexts that shape participants’ lives?

Design, implementation and evaluation

Convert opportunities into interventions

Qualitative research can provide in-depth actionable insights that inform the design and implementation of interventions.

  • What are some solutions that can address the user's needs?
  • What does implementation need to look like to reach certain users?
  • What contextual and supply-side factors influence the desired outcome?

Test and evaluate interventions

Qualitative research can  provide user insights and additional contextual information  into an intervention’s performance.

  • How effective was the implementation of an intervention?
  • What use do participants make of the intervention?
  • How does the intervention impact  their lived experiences?
  • What worked or didn’t and why?

Adoption and scale

Adopt interventions and scale

Insights about specific user groups and contexts can inform how an intervention can be scaled to maximize impact.

  • How does the model/intervention need to be adopted for other contexts?
  • What system changes should we invest in to enable this model to scale?
  • How can learnings be disseminated?
  • How can outcomes be scaled to maximize impact?
Participatory Action Research
Medium value
Medium value

Identify problems and opportunities together with participants, leveraging their knowledge, lived experience, and access.

Primary value
Primary value

Co-develop and implement interventions with participants, leveraging their knowledge, creativity, and lived experience.

Low value
Low value

Collaboratively explore intervention benefits and limitations

Low value
Low value

Conduct participatory exploration in new intervention locations

Medium
Primary
Low
Low
Ethnographic Research
Primary value
Primary value

Explore problems from the participants’ point of view, in the physical/cultural context in which they occur.

Low value
Low value

Probe participants' perspectives on proposed interventions

Medium value
Medium value

Understand underlying contextual/cultural drivers and barriers for uptake of a particular intervention.

Low value
Low value

Explore future users' perspectives on intervention

Design-led Research
Medium value
Medium value

Reframe challenges and translate them into actionable insights and opportunities from the users’ perspectives.

Primary value
Primary value

Inform the development and testing of various hypotheses for intervention design.

Low value
Low value

Seek user perspectives on intervention implementation

Medium value
Medium value

Inform how an intervention may need to be adapted for a new context, market, or target user group.

socio-behavioral Research
Low value
Low value

Explore how individual behavior might affect specific user needs

Medium value
Medium value

Surface insights into participant's behaviors, offer models to inform how a product or intervention will fit into or alter their thoughts or actions.

Medium value
Medium value

Understand what aspects of participants’ behaviors help or hinder the update of an intervention.

Primary value
Primary value

Systematically explore the different social and behavioral factors that impact the update of an intervention in new locations or among different user groups.

Implementation Research
Low value
Low value

Anticipate how problem definition and user needs might shape implementation

Low value
Low value

Explore how intervention design could impact implementation processes

Primary value
Primary value

Understand and quantify the impact specific contextual factors of the implementation have on the performance of an intervention.

Medium value
Medium value

Inform how an intervention may need to be modified for optimal performance in new contexts and what measures need to be put in place for optimal performance.

Compare all five approaches through a bird’s eye view

This tool aims to help you design and manage qualitative research investments. Compare the key differences between approaches and go deeper to grasp the value of each different approach.

Compare all approaches