Have you noticed an increase in the price of your broadband or mobile phone contract? Did you read the small print when you took out the contract? If you didn’t, our research for Ofcom about in-contract price rises research suggests that you are not alone…
Read MoreOur research with people who can’t receive their post provided rich insight into how post exclusion is exacerbating the difficulties people are facing due to rises in living costs. Their stories are central to Citizen Advice’s campaign for change…
Read MoreIn November 2023, we presented our research on the Duty of Candour in chiropractic and osteopathy services. The research brought considered views from patients into the debate on how we can make care safer for all…
Read MoreFollowing on from our previous blog about research amongst Thames Water’s vulnerable customers, here we focus on how we delivered research where three quarters of participants came from minoritised ethnic groups. Read about how we shaped the sample through careful analysis of Thames Water’s customer base and how we worked with Ethnic Opinions to reach the right people and enable them to share their stories…
Read MoreWhen Thames Water commissioned us to conduct an ambitious study on vulnerability amongst their customers, we pressed the pause button. Instead of diving straight into the design and recruitment, we took time to interrogate what vulnerability means in this context, who in their catchment area might be vulnerable, and what we needed to ask people to understand what makes them vulnerable. This preliminary analysis involved reviewing existing data and evidence to shape the research, and it had a material impact on the resultant design.
Read MoreA desktop review of international comms campaigns that aim to change consumer behaviour - what can we learn? The Consumer Council for Water asked Community Research to conduct a wide-ranging review to synthesise lessons to help galvanise action and foster collaborative working in the sector. Here’s what we did…
Read MoreOur recent in-depth research provided the Legal Services Board with a granular understanding of how people can be vulnerable when they have a legal issue. The research shows how this can affect their ability to engage with (and feel agency) over matters that have a significant impact on their lives. It also shows the material impact that legal professionals have on increasing or decreasing people’s vulnerability. We used case studies and storyboards to bring these stories to life…
Read MoreIn an age of social media soundbites, how do we make sure that research outputs are compelling enough to inspire and influence decision-makers and those who wield power to make changes? In July we brought together a group of people who commission, conduct and use research to inform policy to hear from them what works…
Read MoreWe are frequently asked to conduct research projects where we wish people to tell us how they feel about and are likely to respond to risk. Exploring risk is complex. Our tendency is to assume that we make rational decisions regarding the risks we face – weighing up likelihood and potential cost to decide what (if any) mitigations we will put in place….but that is rarely the case in practice. So, what do we need to think about when undertaking research related to risk?
Read MoreAt Community Research, we have been offering purely online approaches since the start of the pandemic. Of course we haven’t wanted to put our participants or our researchers at any risk. But, with restrictions lifted, it is time for us to review this. We are keen to get back and speak to people in person if and when there are clear advantages.
Read MoreCitizens Advice wanted to understand the impacts of temporary post office closures (and their replacement with outreach services) on rural communities. We took a 'community view' approach, recruiting several residents, community leaders and SME owners within each village to get a rounded view of how the community as a whole used traditional post offices, and the impacts of their closure or of the shift to mobile post-office services (provided, for example, from a van a few hours a week).
Read MoreThe market research industry is based on asking questions about, amongst other things, people’s behaviour. Asking well-designed questions is part of our core skill-set….but, so is knowing that asking questions is NOT always the best or the only thing to do!
Read MoreOne of the challenges we face when trying to measure opinion on difficult policy areas is that quantitative surveys can miss the complexities and nuance of the issues. In contrast, deliberative research enables us to give a small number of people the time and information they need to come up with an informed ‘citizen’ perspective – something that is not possible in a 15-minute survey… or is it?! Well – not quite, but we recently tried something that came a bit closer to getting a more informed opinion from a nationally representative sample.
Read MoreA recent brief from the Legal Services Board (LSB) on a contentious policy issue meant we had to take a different approach - replicating the Citizens Jury approach, but doing it all online. Read more here…
Read MoreThings are gradually returning to ‘normal’, but we still need a considered approach before we go back to face-to-face research. Here we talk about how we’ll make decisions about when face-to-face is the right approach.
Read MoreRecently we have been researching how people value and understand the water environment on behalf of the Consumer Council for Water. Whilst the research was in relation to perceptions of the water environment, it has broader applications in terms of providing insights into people’s relationship with the environment as a whole and the dynamics between the consumer and citizen perspective.
Read MoreWe are increasingly being asked to conduct research which seeks to understand people’s responses and reactions to innovation and technology. Sometimes this includes technology that they are as yet unfamiliar with, but they will come across and get used to over the next decade or so. We have learned a lot about the best way to tackle such subjects and we recently also held a discussion with a number of regulators and consumer bodies to share ideas and learning on this. We thought we should share the conclusions.
Read MoreWe previously committed to develop some explicit commitments for making our research more racially and ethnically inclusive and here they are. We’d welcome your thoughts, comments and additions.
Read MoreThe Legal Services Board (LSB) is developing a new strategy for legal services regulation. It wanted to understand the needs and priorities of members of the public to inform the development of the strategy. Under ordinary circumstances they might have wanted to run some workshops with a cross-section of consumers … but of course this was not going to be possible during the Summer of 2020.
Read More2020 will be defined not just by a global pandemic, but also by the power and passion of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and its impact on public and corporate consciousness. The BLM movement draws a line in the sand and calls on every one of us to speak up and play our part in building a racially inclusive future. At Community Research, we are pulling together an explicit set of commitments to make our own research more racially inclusive, from the inception of research briefs right through to talking about the findings.
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