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Blog: 'Hearing disabled people's voices through research is immensely powerful'

New to the English Federation of Disability Sport (EFDS) website in 2015, we'll feature a blog post every Friday through the year.

February's theme is research and insight - Jo Upton and Hannah Beech from consumer research agency 2CV provide insight into how your research should be undertaken, and how the results should benefit your understanding.

Tips and techniques to be shared

At 2CV, we’ve been conducting research projects about disabled people for a number of years. We feel that we’ve collected some useful tips and techniques along the way which we’d like to share.

Throughout our research process, we adopt the ‘social model’ of disability.  This means we recognise that being disabled is different for every individual. Each one of their experiences is unique. It also means that our approach is shaped in a way that ensures we’re inclusive – designing for people’s preferences and not limited. 

This thinking is embedded in to all stages of the research process: research design, recruitment and delivery of findings.

Research design – how to maximise the research but stay realistic

We’re ambitious with our research methods. We’ve conducted large-scale workshops featuring a diverse mix of people with a range of impairment types. However, to ensure we succeed, there are several guidelines we adopt:

  1. Understand the real-life world of the respondents. We thoroughly recommend designing approaches that help you to get up close with people. Immersing yourself in the participants' worlds and spending time with them in their environments soon helps you to get over any assumptions you might inadvertently make about their lives.
  2. Remember, we are speaking to people not their impairments. Sounds simple, but we put the person at the heart of the research experience and design activities and tasks that are engaging and thought-provoking for all.
  3. To stimulate discussion, don’t just focus on their impairment. Engage your participants as people.
  4. Stay realistic with what can be achieved within a research session. Activities nearly always take longer than you expect. You have to build in the necessary time to allow everyone a chance to contribute. This might mean repeating oneself for different participants, communicating back and forth through British Sign Language interpreters or supporting people in other ways as they arise.
  5. Take any interested parties along the research journey with you. Helping them to see the world through the eyes and ears of their audience is immensely powerful. It means that the research can really deliver those “a-ha!” moments.

Recruitment - how to ensure you have the right people in your research sample

Allow time to find the right people to take part in the research. When recruiting disabled people the recruitment process can take up to six weeks.

Use a specialist recruitment company.  The companies we use are plugged into the right networks and can use word-of-mouth to find exactly who we’re looking for.

Telephone and/or email people before they attend a research session.  Typically, we call them and talk them through what to expect, and make sure we know if they have any special requirements to do the tasks we’ve designed. For example, do they need interpreters, large print materials, assistants etc?. This means you’re prepared... and there should be fewer surprises on the day!

Delivery of findings – how to ensure you represent your audience in the findings?

We regularly include multimedia within our debriefs. It means that the insights are given an authenticity beyond a PowerPoint slide. You hear the voice of your audience and see them as they are. Quotes and photos also help to bring them to life.

Think about who the audience for your findings will be, and how they might use it. Hearing disabled people's voices through research is immensely powerful. 

Too often we stereotype people and form ideas of what a disabled person's life must be like, rather than actually speaking to people directly and finding out what people really think and feel.

Research can help to break down these barriers and change people's negative perceptions.