Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods

Term 2 (AY: 2024-25)

MBA

Session 6: Projective techniques

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Projective methods: Overview
 Projection is generally understood to mean attributing to others characters
individuals cannot or will not see in themselves. It has roots in psychoanalysis by
Sigmund Freud, clinical social psychology and cultural anthropology.

 Projective measures can be a way to reduce problems of social desirability and

topical sensitivity by having the participant project their thoughts and feelings
onto another being or situation presented.

 They are used in conjunction with other methods. These methods are widely used
to explore the neglected topic of consumer fantasy.

 Tests like Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) in psychology is based on the idea of
projection. TAT is a type of projective test that involves describing ambiguous
scenes.
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Projective methods: Overview

 A projective test involves presenting the subject with an ambiguous

stimulus - one that does not quite make sense in itself – and asking her to
make sense of it. The theory is that in order to make it make sense she will
have to add to it – to fill out the picture – and in so doing she projects part
of herself into it.

Psychological roots of projection

 Classical projection by Freud – ego defense mechanism to reduce anxiety.

 Carl Jung – the defense mechanisms are not about the functions of ego
alone, rather they are manifestations of patterns that are already present
in the unconscious.
4 Projective and enabling techniques

Classically, the idea of a projective technique relates to a device that allows

the individual research participant to articulate repressed or otherwise
withheld feelings by projecting these onto another character.

The idea of enabling techniques relates to a device which allows the

individual research participant to find a means of expressing feelings,
thoughts and so on which they find hard to articulate.

This has consequence in analysis: with enabling techniques the research

participants are talking as themselves, whereas with projective techniques
the research participants are talking as someone else and the researcher
makes the interpretative assumption that they are talking as themselves.
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Projective methods: Overview

Three categories
 Dennis Rook (2006) groups projective methods into three categories,
depending upon the amount of information they generate. The
smallest amount of information is generated by word association,
sentence completion, cartoon tests, and symbol matching.
 A moderate amount of information is elicited by object
personification, shopping list analysis, and picture drawing.
 And the greatest amount of information is revealed by collage
construction, thematic stories, dream exercises, psychodrama, and
autodriving.

The research objectives should drive the choice among these methods.
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Word association
Present words to the respondents. Depending upon their tastes and
preferences, they reply with a word that matches the most with the word they
were presented with.

Such top-of-the-mind unguarded associations can provide insights into how the
product category is thought of by consumers.

Frequency of elicitation, response time, and the complexity of words in reply are
noted to evaluate how well the consumer/respondent can identify products
and brands.

For the purpose of comparative analysis, depict the word associations as word
clouds. [See the comparison between In-and-Out Burger and McDonald’s in
Belk et al., p. 45]
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Sentence completion

Is intended to get unguarded top-of-mind associations. It provides more of a

stimulus than a single word.

E.g., in validating a measure of materialism, the following questions were

asked:
Christmas is a time when …
Owning a house with a yard …
The one thing that would make me happiest at this point in my life …

The results were then categorised as materialistic or non-materialistic and

instances of each type of association were compared to scores on
materialism scales.
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Cartoon tests

These tests present a simple drawing of a situation and ask participants to

describe what they think is going on. These stories may then reveal
assumptions and attitudes.

The example in Belk et al., compares an angry male customer with a

female clerk and an angry female customer with a male clerk. It helps us
learn something about the role of gender in retail service encounters.

Thought or speech bubbles are used for presenting people in cartoon

tests.
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Symbol matching
The researcher tries to get a quick visual metaphor for a person, brand, company, or
other object of interest.

Strategies
Present an array of cups from dainty and delicate tea cups to hardy large mugs and
ask which one represented a company better.

Use an array of animals, and ask ‘If XYZ person were one of these animals, which
one would she or he be?’ Similarly, list different breed of dogs, and elicit responses
on how to match the breeds with different human traits.

Ask respondents to match people, brands, or companies with different automobiles,

abstract designs, decorated rooms, shapes, colours, footwear, clothes, hats, houses,
or other expressive symbols.
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Object personification

Object personifications are usually non-visual, unlike the techniques

discussed so far.

The researcher may ask ‘If this brand were a television star or movie
star, who would it be?’ Or the researcher might use more
anthropomorphic representations such as animals or cars.
[See the example given in Belk et al. of Apple computers matched
with Volkswagen and PC with Chevrolet that was falling apart; PC
was seen as stylistically bland and unreliable in comparison to the
Mac.]
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Shopping list

Ask the consumers/respondents to create a shopping list for themselves, or

evaluate another person’s list.
[See the example in Belk et al. where the participants had to compare
two shopping lists: one shopping list included instant coffee, and the other
drip ground coffee. Female participants were asked to visualize the
character of the persons(homemakers) who prepared these two lists.
Instant coffee list owner was identified as spendthrift and lazy, who
wanted an easy way out of a ‘proper’ wife who brewed coffee.]

Similar examples include, impression formation based on the consumption

evident from the contents of a wallet or purse; impression formation based
on the consumption evident from the contents and neatness of a person’s
room.
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Picture drawing
Derived from child psychology.

Machover Draw-a-Person test asks a child to draw a boy or a girl and makes inferences
about the child’s intelligence and personality based on the pictures. [See Kara Chan’s
study in Hong Kong: It explored children’s perceptions of material possessions in Hong
Kong using drawing and open-ended questions. Chinese children aged 6-12 were
asked to draw what comes to their minds for two statements: “This child has a lot of new
and expensive toys”; and, “This child does not have a lot of toys.” Findings showed that
younger children were more likely to relate material possessions with happiness,
friendship, and feeling good about oneself. Older children were more likely to relate
materialistic possessions with wastefulness.]
Another example: Both children and adults were asked to draw the Easter Bunny, in
order to investigate children’s and adults’ understandings of mythical figures. The
researcher learnt that children were likely to depict the Easter Bunny as more like rabbits
in nature, while adults were more likely to personify and anthropomorphise the
character.
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Picture drawing

Tips for effective use of drawings

Drawings have proven to be a useful way to focus interviews with
children, who will then be able to elaborate on the drawings, and say
what is going on.
Drawings work with adults as well.
Follow up the visual with an interview, rather than let the drawing or
other visual representation stand on its own.
Work out interpretations jointly with participants for all projective tasks.
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Collage construction
Participants co-construct interpretations.
Conventional use of this technique is when participants are given scissors, glue sticks,
magazines, and a poster board and are asked to do a collage that expresses a theme
of interest such as desire, dream (or nightmare) honeymoon or nostalgia. Computer-
assisted collages have become more popular these days.
Example 1: Researchers wanted to identify metaphors related to bathing and
showering, which are then to be used in new products. The metaphors evoked
included: car wash, waterproof control panel in a speedboat, sauna, water aerobics,
and tropical island.
Example 2: The participants had to include a metaphor to explain their experience of
going to Broadway [ZMET study]. One participant explained the experience as,
‘Broadway brings balance to everyday life’.
Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) is widely used for identifying the basic
metaphors that express how consumers think and feel about a focal topic.
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Thematic stories
It involves giving participants a drawing or photograph and having them tell a story
about it. It is a variation of TAT (see above). TAT was designed to produce reliable
quantitative scores from qualitative data. Whereas, storytelling is usually interpreted
qualitatively.
The directions given to participants in both TAT and thematic stories are more or less
the same. Seek answer to the following questions as you show the pictures /drawings
to the informants.
 What is happening? Who are the people?
 What has led up to this situation? That is, what has happened in the past?
 What is being thought? What is wanted? By whom?
 What will happen? What will be done?

The objective of using thematic stories is to tap into consumer fantasies.

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Dream exercises
Researchers take advantage of the fact that in order to study the consumer fantasy,
it is better to use a direct manifestation of fantasy itself – which is the dream. A wide
variety of projections of desire takes place in dreams. [e.g., A hypothetical dream
about a product – say a BMW – says a lot about your preferences about the
product.]

One study: Why women were not buying a particular machine used to kill roaches?
Roaches were attracted inside a yellow structure and they died inside the machine.
Women participants drew scenes from their dreams and researchers observed that
women commonly associated roaches with the men who had done them wrong.
Ordinary roach killer, e.g., sprays, helped them fulfil their fantasies better. It is said
that the women took great pleasure in watching the roaches squirm and die when
they were sprayed with ordinary roach killer. The new product did not make the
suffering and death of the roaches visible. Hence, they did not find the product
interesting.
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Psychodrama
It is borrowed from psychotherapy.

The informant is asked to act out a particular role in a situation. [e.g., to

take on the role of a customer whose car is being serviced and who is
told that it is not ready as promised and is going to cost twice as much to
be repaired as they had been led to believe. The researcher or assistant
then plays the role of the service manager. Different options are given to
the customer (the informant) as s/he waits the car to be repaired (loaner
car, waiting room with facilities of TV and magazines, etc.)

[Role reversal is followed in a therapeutic situation, but not in consumer

research.]
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Autodriving /visual elicitation
The researcher uses visual stimuli to derive interpretations and stories from the
informant. Often times these stimuli are photos or videos depicting the
informant in an earlier context – someone bargaining in a market might be
photographed/ videographed and the researcher could approach the person
later and inquire about their mental state when they bargained in a particular
manner.

Other methods involve: Using people’s own family photos as stimuli; using
historic photos to prompt memories from informants, asking the respondents to
identify the changes that have taken place.

With smartphone it is much easier. The researcher can ask the informant
him/herself to take a picture of the setting at present and send it to the
researcher. This photo can be used by the researcher for auto-driving later.
19 Projective techniques: Issue of reliability
Criticism: projective techniques in clinical psychology -- the interpretation of
projective techniques can be as much a projection of the psychologist as of
the subject, particularly in techniques like the ink-blot test.

The ‘for’ arguments:

M. Haire’s original study has been repeated by a number of researchers. It
attests to the reliability and validity of projective techniques.

Some problems of reliability can be mitigated by a participatory approach: “an

exploration of what was done in a projective task can be extended to a
discussion (within the research as it progresses) of what this means to the people
involved in the research.”
20 Projective techniques: Issue of validity
Criticism:
Will et al. (1996): the ability of projective techniques to tap into consumers’
subconscious remains unproven and that their main function is therefore as devices to
create open and uninhibited discussion.

The ‘for’ argument: projective techniques enable respondents to express themselves in

fuller, more subtle and in fairer ways (than they could in responding to direct
questioning), and that this can therefore achieve greater validity than is possible using
methods whose reliability is higher.
Anonymous devices help assure freedom of expression (e.g., bubble drawing)
To ensure validity, a comparison of respondents’ projections about a particular
product or brand could be made with their own reported or actual brand usage (via
scanning data or a pantry check), to see to what extent one is predictive of the other.