You’re not alone (so do most others in the UK, including those who smoke, drink and eat everything we’re told not to). So how do we break out of our bad habits? The Department of Health asked us to ask the public this very question: what they would require from an NHS Service designed to help people improve and take control of their health.

We talked to masses of people. It was fascinating. And it helped to inform the NHS’s online / digital service launched last year. It hasn’t been properly advertised yet but… watch this space!

Everyone says they do, but our research for the Department of Health says not. And others agree.

Recruit drinkers in the pub (or bar, or club, or restaurant…), interview them on the spot and ask them to guess how many units of alcohol they consume in a typical week. Follow it up by persuading them to try different variations of a drinking diary. Call them a week later to hear what they’ve discovered. Result? Much surprise, some worry and a lot of interest in finding out more.

Fast forward nine months and DH’s alcohol units campaign is launched. It’s reported in the press and on TV by numerous journalists exposing drinkers’ ignorance by recruiting them in the pub (or bar, or club, or restaurant…), using a distinctly similar technique to ours…

Research in action.

Yes we can!

Nine two hour groups conducted in viewing studios and debriefed in less than 48 hours – start to finish. Phew! It may not make it into the Guinness Book of Records, but it left us with an unparalleled knowledge of people’s preferences for future car designs and… a happy (albeit a somewhat weary) client!

First recruit customers to store A, ask them to browse and contemplate a purchase. Then put them on a bus to store B where they do the same and begin your group on the bus! Carry on where you left off after they’ve browsed the second store and compare findings. Research on the go!

In the summer of 2007 we conducted a large project for DCMS looking at public attitudes to the government’s plans for the 2012 Olympic Legacy. Quite apart from the challenge of researching something that most people had an opinion about, but few people really understood, we wanted to give the DCMS research team an opportunity to ‘meet their public’, to put their own questions to people, and to come face to face with people’s hopes, prejudices and concerns.

We did this by conducting 20-odd groups across the whole of the UK, followed by a workshop in London attended by members of the public from across the sample spectrum, and the DCMS research team. Delegates were divided into breakout groups, each of which included a DCMS representative, and we explored the issues which had emerged from the previous group discussions. The DCMS people listened, asked questions and answered specific queries from the groups. We then had something to eat, and convened a plenary session in which delegates were invited to put questions that had arisen from the breakout groups to us and the DCMS team. It was certainly a lively, but also a very productive, meeting.

This experience, we thought, would help to hammer home the findings of the research, give them a feel for the strength of people’s views, and give them confidence in conclusions which would have an important influence on policy and communications over the coming years. It seems we were right. Not only was the workshop one of the reasons why we won the job in the first place, it was also the part that the DCMS team remembered and commented on most afterwards. Moreover, looking at the questions in this way clarified in our minds some of the issues which had arisen during the earlier groups. Some pretty detailed segmentation of attitudes, and the identification of one or two unpalatable but important truths, were the result.

The Monitor is our internal research project.

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