Lessons from doing field research in Spanish
A first-hand experience of how talking to your users in a familiar environment gives you more insights.
Last September, I got involved in a community project that showed me the power of field studies. At the time, I thought I understood the value of field research, but it wasn’t until I got involved with this particular project that I saw just how powerful it is.
One of my teammates at Center Centre, Glad Beltran, was working with the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce on a community project called Velocity 2040. She was helping them build a survey to understand what Chattanooga’s residents envisioned for their town’s future.
The survey
The survey consisted of two main questions:
- What are the things most important to our community’s future?
- What are the 3 things you would pick to do first in our community?
Each question had a list of statements (provided by the Chamber) for participants to choose from.
Did someone say Spanish?
One of the Chamber’s goals was to ensure diversity among survey participants by making sure anyone could take the survey. It needed to be inclusive.
Hispanics are the largest minority in the US,* with Chattanooga’s own Hispanic population only continuing to grow. It made sense to make the survey available in Spanish because of this and Glad’s ability to speak the language.
It’s important to note that while we would have loved to build and test the survey in other languages, we didn’t have the bandwidth or budget to execute before our deadline.
Glad had finished moderating a round of research sessions when she enlisted my help. She needed an observer that could understand Spanish so she could concentrate on moderating sessions. Luckily, I’m a native Spanish speaker.
Together, we set off on an adventure to understand how to convey the information in the survey effectively in Spanish.
*See 2018 Census report for people of Hispanic origin in the US.
Planning
One of the biggest challenges of doing research in two languages was figuring out how different the moderator guide in Spanish needed to be from the English one.
We had to consider that there are many cultures wrapped into the “Spanish speaker” category. What one Latin American country thinks is okay to say the other may consider rude or insulting (and this can vary within the country as well).
One example of this is the use of formal versus informal tone. Picking the wrong tone can start off a conversation on the wrong foot.
Some people perceive the informal “you” — “tu” — to be rude if they don’t know you or if you’re younger than them. Others see the use of the formal version of the word — “usted” — off-putting and alienating.
Our goal was to get people to open up to us and tell us what was important to them. We didn’t want to offend them before we had the chance to ask them how they felt about the survey.
We wanted to be respectful, so I reached out to an online Latin community for advice. The best advice we got was to be flexible and prepared to adjust on the fly.
When we conducted our sessions, Glad made sure she let our participants know her Spanish wasn’t perfect—she was honest. We believe this, in addition to mirroring how people chose to speak with us, helped us in bridging the cultural gap.
It turns out, people are quite forgiving. As long as we met people in their comfort zone, it didn’t matter if we started off talking differently.
Recruiting
Recruiting Spanish speakers for interviews and usability testing proved to be a harder effort than we thought, especially since we only had two days to interview people.
We both reached out to people in our network, but their availability didn’t align with our deadline.
Our next natural step was meeting our users out in the field, so I called one of the many Latin grocery stores in Chattanooga and got their permission to do field studies at their store. Due to the rainy weather, there wasn’t a lot of foot traffic. However, the outing still proved fruitful — we spoke with three people!
Later that evening, I ran into some Spanish speakers at a building downtown and recruited two of them for usability tests in that very building the next day.
To ensure we talked to enough people, we visited a Latin restaurant the next day to both interview and recruit. We managed to interview one of the staff members and recruited three.
When evening came, only one person showed. It was one of the Spanish speakers I ran into the day before. Thankfully, they called a friend over.
We spoke with a total of six people. While it may not sound like a lot, small sample sizes are actually quite common in qualitative research.
Sometimes people don’t show up. This happens often in user research. Flexibility is your best ally in these situations.
What we learned
We learned that culture, language, income, status, and education influenced people’s experience of the survey and how they approached it.
Below are some of the things Glad and I learned in more detail.
Culture and language
Conducting research in Spanish gave us a first-hand experience of how much culture and language affect the way people perceive things.
People don’t talk the same way in Spanish as they do in English, so literal translations don’t work.
For example, the word “diverse” didn’t make sense when talking about cultural and ethnic diversity in Spanish. No one we talked to understood the word in that context.
Another term people struggled with was “middle class.” Its meaning varies depending on where you live and your economic status.
One person’s middle class is another’s upper class.
The power of a shared experience
Building rapport with participants in research sessions is important. Sometimes, having a shared experience makes it easier to learn more about a person’s drives and motivations.
In our case, our participants trusted us because our families emigrated to the US, like them, and we shared a language.
We found common ground and made ourselves relatable.
Participants then told us about how the statements in the survey did or didn’t consider their worries and the intricacies of their lives.
Since this study, I have continued to seek a shared experience with participants in studies I conduct. Whether it’s language, geographic location, or something else, such as allergies. The trick is finding the thing that makes you less intimidating and more friendly, because, let’s face it, interviews are nerve racking.
People are more willing to tell you their story when they’re comfortable.
Where you talk to people matters
When we set out to talk to people in the field, we took a gamble. We didn’t know if we’d get to talk to anyone and we didn’t have any idea of what kind of things we’d learn.
Some of our participants were working when we invited them to take part in our study.
We accommodated them by stopping the session whenever a customer showed up and resuming it when they left. This took longer than a scheduled session, but made it possible to talk to the people we needed to talk to.
Not everyone has the luxury to step away from work for an hour or spend time away from home. Our approach helped us talk to people who otherwise would not have come to Center Centre for a scheduled session.
Also, sometimes you need the comfort of a familiar environment to speak freely. Our choice of location encouraged candid responses. Grocery store participants felt comfortable talking at work.
Lack of education can be a barrier
Some of the people we talked to struggled with reading the survey. They dismissed options due to not understanding one or two words. Low literacy was a barrier in getting their input.
For example, one participant struggled with understanding the following statement:
“Capacitar a la fuerza de trabajo en las habilidades que necesitan para obtener buenos trabajos.”
It translates to:
“Train the workforce in the skills they need to get good jobs.”
The participant struggled to explain what she thought the sentence meant, so we asked her to show us words that didn’t make sense to her. We learned she didn’t understand the words “capacitar” and “habilidades.”
The sentence above was not the only one participants struggled with.
In addition to low literacy, a lack of awareness around certain topics made it difficult for people to contribute. Taking the survey was not as easy as we thought since picking statements from the lists we provided required background and context some participants didn’t have.
Many were unaware of community issues, technology advancements, and programs offered by Hamilton county.
Status affects awareness and perception
When we started interviewing Spanish speaking residents, we didn’t consider the possibility that we would talk to undocumented residents. Our target was people who lived in Chattanooga and spoke Spanish.
We learned that legal status affected the way people perceived the survey.
The undocumented people we talked to didn’t think quite like other people who live in Chattanooga because of their situation. They felt many of the options within the survey didn’t apply to them (even though they did) or weren’t aware of their existence.
Instead of opportunities to improve their quality of life, they saw risks.
A lack of awareness combined with fear affected the choices some of our participants made when taking the survey.
Important Note: Researchers are responsible for relaying our learnings in a way that does not harm the people we talk to. Participant welfare and the safety of others should always trump research.
We got the insights we did by promising anonymity.
I highly encourage you to:
- Review all possible ethical conflicts prior to a study to minimize surprises
- Deal with ethical and moral conflicts on a case by case basis as they arise
- Educate yourself about local, state, and federal laws around mandatory reporting
The outcome
At the end of the study, Glad crafted recommendations and a plan of action to create the best experience possible within our deadline.
While our learnings didn’t impact the survey as much as we would have liked them to, we left the project having learned multiple lessons around conducting and delivering research that will help us in future projects.
Read the survey results for yourself.
Read what Nooga Today had to say about the survey the day it went live.
Conclusion
Location is important. Findings in a controlled environment, like a lab or a conference room, don’t always give you the full picture.
There’s a comfort that comes from talking in a familiar place. However, comfort comes in layers and location is only one of them.
How you recruit your participants is just as important as how and where you conduct your research. It’s possible to miss out on talking to a group of your users due to the methods you choose.
It’s important we take the time to get to know our users and make every effort to meet them where they’re at. We need to see how they live and how that affects them, because that influences what they do or don’t do.
Resources
Looking to learn more about field research and conducting research ethically? Check out the books, articles, and videos listed below.
Field Research
Research Ethics
Thanks to Glad Beltran, Jessica Ivins, and Graham for reviewing this article.
