Doing Qualitative Studies, Using Statistical Reasoning

Qualitative studies are associated with interviews, focus groups and observations. We introduce experiments as a way of dealing with such studies. In contrast to the common focus on how many respondents choose a particular behaviour we focus on how much a design affect the individual. This is often concerned with analysing the effect of a design. The approach is bottom up, in that the inferences are concerned with each individual. This enables us to look at the variation between people. We consider the common preference profile, defined as that part of the individual preference profiles which is shared by all individuals. A variation seen by the individual means that the message is received with its complexity and meaningfulness, while a big ideosyncratic variations means people understand different things and a Babylonian confusion is the outcome. Findings may be generalized after the effect has been measured at an individual level.