MKTG90041 Chap.3 Discovery Research and Bias
Discovery Research and Bias
Discovery research is designed to replace assumptions with evidence about real experience. The course begins with a recruitment brief, recent-use screening and an interview guide that moves from warm-up into a concrete story, probes and wrap-up. It also names predictable distortions such as confirmation, sampling, social-desirability, egocentric, survivor and acquiescence bias.
This chapter connects each risk to a practical safeguard, shows how interviewer and observer roles improve listening, and preserves a trace between field notes and later synthesis while respecting research care and privacy.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Recruitment briefs tied to a relevant and recent journey
- 02
Open, past-focused, single questions that avoid leading language
- 03
Story, sequence, emotion, workaround and consequence probes
- 04
Confirmation, sampling, social-desirability and acquiescence risks
- 05
Observer notes that separate behaviour, language and interpretation
- 06
Willing adults, transparent purpose and restraint with sensitive data
Worked example · free
AskSia practice weighting: repair a leading reminder interview
- 1Ask about the participant's last relevant booking rather than an imagined future feature.
- 1Request the complete sequence and the point where progress changed.
- 1Probe feelings, workarounds and consequences without naming forgetting as the cause.
- 1Separate exact language and observed action from the researcher's interpretation.
Key terms
- Recruitment brief
- A concise statement of the participant type, relevant experience, screening criteria and recruitment route.
- Leading question
- A prompt that signals the preferred explanation or answer and can distort the participant's response.
- Confirmation bias
- The tendency to notice supporting evidence and discount material that challenges the preferred view.
- Sampling bias
- A distortion created when the recruited group does not represent the relevant target or journey outcomes.
- Social desirability
- A response pattern in which participants give polite or acceptable answers rather than candid experience.
- Survivor bias
- A focus on people who completed or remained while evidence from leavers and abandoners is missed.
- Field note
- A record of event, language, context and clearly labelled interpretation collected during research.
Discovery Research and Bias FAQ
What makes a participant relevant?
Relevance comes from experience with the journey, circumstance or decision under study, not from convenience. Screening should state what the person has recently done and why that experience can inform the design question.
Why ask about the last real occasion?
A recent event provides sequence, context, action and consequence. Hypothetical preference questions often invite idealised answers and make it difficult to distinguish what people say they would do from what they actually did.
How can interview bias be reduced?
Use neutral language, relevant recruitment, varied order where appropriate, privacy, transparent roles and deliberate attention to disconfirming cases. Bias is managed through the design of research rather than a promise to be objective.
What belongs in a field note?
Capture the action sequence, exact useful language, context, emotion, workaround and consequence. Keep the researcher's interpretation separate so later synthesis can trace a theme back to what was observed or reported.
Exam move
Take a weak interview guide and annotate every leading, double-barrelled, hypothetical or yes-no prompt. Rewrite it around a recent event and one topic at a time. Build a bias table that pairs each named distortion with a recruitment, wording, privacy or analysis safeguard. Practise splitting a conclusion into observed evidence, tentative interpretation and solution assumption.
When reviewing research ethics, ask whether participation is willing, the purpose is clear, sensitive information is avoided and the planned users are appropriate to approach. End with a fieldwork checklist that can be used before, during and immediately after each conversation. Rehearse a short interview with a partner and forbid yourself from naming the proposed feature.
Afterward, colour-code event detail, exact language, context and interpretation. Note which follow-up recovered a concrete sequence and which prompt produced only an opinion. Use that contrast to revise the guide before recruitment begins.
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