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Effective Research Communication Strategies

The document provides guidance on effectively summarizing research results: 1. Identify the real question by clarifying what success looks like with relevant stakeholders. 2. Determine what is already known from multiple available information sources, incorporating existing research. 3. Understand stakeholders' expectations for results to test beliefs and frame outcomes as good or bad news. 4. Present results as good or bad news depending on what was wanted, tailoring storytelling and additional details accordingly.

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LloydDagsil
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6 views1 page

Effective Research Communication Strategies

The document provides guidance on effectively summarizing research results: 1. Identify the real question by clarifying what success looks like with relevant stakeholders. 2. Determine what is already known from multiple available information sources, incorporating existing research. 3. Understand stakeholders' expectations for results to test beliefs and frame outcomes as good or bad news. 4. Present results as good or bad news depending on what was wanted, tailoring storytelling and additional details accordingly.

Uploaded by

LloydDagsil
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

1. Identify and clarify the ‘real’ question.

Knowing the right question is half


way to solving the problem. To find out the real question you will normally
need to talk to the relevant people; asking them questions like “What would
success look like?” and “What actions would you like to take once you have
this answer?”
2. Find out what is known and what is available. It is likely there are
multiple sources of information including market research, reports,
transactional data, corporate knowledge, social media and much more. Any
new research should work with what is already known.
3. Find out what people expect the results to be. Finding this out has two
benefits, 1) you can test (confirm or refute) these beliefs during the research
and analysis, 2) you will need to know these so that you can properly
understand if your results are bad news or good news.
4. Know whether your results are good news or bad news. Almost all
research should produce a result that is either good or bad, if you don’t
know whether the result is good or bad (or good with caveats or bad with
some elements of a silver lining), you probably do not know the ‘real’
question. The way you deliver good and bad news is different, the
storytelling is different, and the amount of additional material needed is
different. Whether a result is good or bad news depends on the information
found and what people wanted the information to say.
5. Focus on the big story before diving into the weeds. Find out what most
people think, before looking at segments, which brands/concepts do best
and which do worst; get a feeling for all the strong messages.
6. Don’t tell the client everything you know, tell the answer to their
problem. All the rest of the findings can be made available, but focus on
what they want/need to know.
7. Create a story that when simplified is still correct. If the story is that
90% of people like your new product, that will simplify to ‘Most people like
your product’ – no problem. If the story is that 10% of women like your
product and 20% of men like it, then it will simplify down to ‘This is good for
men’ – which is a bad simplification as it ignores 80% of men who do not
like it.

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