Sophie Reese, Senior Manager of Strategic Insights and Voice of the Customer, argues that empathy, not objectivity, is the most critical skill in qualitative research, especially on sensitive topics. She walks through how careful preparation, active listening, and a willingness to go off script create the conditions for participants to share insights researchers would never have thought to ask for. The talk draws on over a decade of experience across finance, health, family law, media, and education.
Key Takeaways
- Empathy requires active practice. Listen more than you speak, watch for emotional and tonal cues, and find genuine points of connection with participants before expecting them to open up.
- Preparation at every touchpoint, from screener to confirmation email to icebreaker, sets the conditions for participant comfort and reduces friction during the session itself.
- Going off script is often where the most valuable insights live. When a participant takes the conversation in an unexpected direction, treat it as signal, not noise.
- Qualitative data should always be paired with other data types such as surveys or operational data. It should flesh out and make other data compelling, not single-handedly drive major decisions.
- Keep your camera on even if the participant does not. It signals full attention and builds trust. Observer cameras, by contrast, are better kept off to avoid distraction.
- Lean into silence and stay calm when participants share unexpected or difficult things. Overreacting causes participants to shut down; composure keeps the conversation open.
Questions & Answers
- Sometimes when qualitative research is done really well, it can end up being almost too compelling. How do you balance getting key insights with rich detail, but also avoid using low-end data to inform massive decisions?
- Qualitative research needs to be paired with other types of work. For example, run a large-scale survey first and use it as the launching point for qualitative interviews. Stakeholders will often ask whether ten interviews are enough to make a decision, and the answer is that they should not be. Qualitative data should flesh out and make other data more compelling, whether that is survey data or operational data from your platform. The goal is one cohesive story that is not overly led by a single data type.
- How do you manage taking notes and remembering key moments of the interviews without interrupting the interview experience?
- Having a dedicated notetaker is the most valuable solution. Reese occasionally brings in multiple notetakers to capture different perspectives. She keeps a notepad nearby and tells participants in advance that they may see her jot something down. She also sends observers a Google Form after the session to capture their key moments, since different roles in the company listen for different things. If a recording is available, she listens back at about 1.4 speed and takes additional notes. She also recommends building a spreadsheet in advance with key questions and noting either the timestamp or a few key words as the interview progresses.
- When you have a reluctant respondent, how often do you end the interview early and how do you make that transition?
- It is always disappointing but sometimes necessary. Even then, Reese touches on everything she said she would cover, because the groundwork was laid in advance. When ending early, she says something like: 'Thank you so much, I have asked all of the questions I have for you today. Is there anything you would like to ask me?' She also gives participants her email address and notes that she frequently receives follow-up messages from reluctant respondents after the call, sometimes with things they were not comfortable sharing in the moment.
- If you have an observer on a call, should they have their camera on as well?
- No. Observer cameras should stay off. Observers are often not trained researchers and their visible note-taking or reactions can distract participants. Reese recommends telling participants upfront that others will be on the call with cameras and microphones off. She also keeps a side Slack or chat channel open with observers so they can flag follow-up questions or moments she may have missed.
- If you do not have a notetaker available, what is good practice for letting the participant know you are using a tool to record notes?
- Build it into the script. Requirements vary by state but in New York, for example, you are legally required to inform participants if you are recording. Most tools will also generate an audio or visual notification. Reese introduces herself and the session, then says she would like to record for ease and so she can give full attention, explains exactly how the recording will be stored and used, and confirms consent before turning on recording. If the participant declines, she lets them know she will be taking notes, which may cause a brief pause before her responses.
- When thinking about empathy, do you use different moderators to match the demographics of the respondents so they can be as empathetic as possible?
- Reese tries to do this where possible but notes a line between empathetic matching and tokenization. Resource or team diversity constraints often make demographic matching impossible. In those cases, she relies on language, tone, and other connection-building practices. When a demographic gap is significant, she names it directly at the start of the session, acknowledging her own potential blind spots and framing the conversation as one where she is there to learn from the participant as much as to ask questions.
Session Notes
What Empathy Actually Means in a Research Context
Empathy is distinct from sympathy. Sympathy acknowledges how someone feels; empathy means bringing that feeling into yourself and finding a moment of genuine connection. Sophie Reese argues this distinction matters enormously in qualitative research, where surface-level acknowledgment is not enough to get participants to share what they actually think and feel.
- Empathy does not come naturally to everyone and requires deliberate practice, both inside and outside of research settings.
- Common barriers include limited shared experience with participants, difficulty connecting across different backgrounds, and the attention demands of moderating.
- Daily habits that build empathy: listen more than you speak, ask questions rather than assume, watch for changes in tone, facial expression, and physical demeanor.
Preparation Is the Foundation
Every touchpoint before the interview shapes whether a participant feels safe enough to be honest. Reese treats setup as a core part of the research method, not an administrative task.
- Keep recruitment emails and screeners general, but get very specific on the booking page: will participants need to share their screen, turn on video, or be in a specific space?
- Reiterate expectations in the confirmation email and calendar invite. Always give participants at least 24 hours notice of any instructions.
- Remind participants at every stage that they can cancel, reschedule, or opt out of any question at any time. They owe you nothing.
- Start every session with icebreaker questions, even if you already have the demographic information. It builds comfort and often surfaces context you can return to later.
- A notetaker or observer frees the moderator to give full attention to the participant. If an observer is present on a call, tell the participant who is there and why.
- Keep your own camera on throughout the session, even if the participant does not turn theirs on. It demonstrates that you are fully present.
What Qualitative Research Is Actually For
Reese uses her experience as a participant in a long-running longitudinal health study to illustrate what qualitative research should not be.
Qualitative research is not just about ticking a box. And if that's all you're doing, there are better ways to gather that information from your participants.
The study she participates in runs like a rigid survey, delivered by phone, with no deviation from a script and answers recorded on a three or five point scale. She argues that if there is no room for follow-up or exploration, the format is mismatched to the method. Qualitative research is for understanding the why: motivations, frustrations, beliefs, and the reasons behind behavior.
Handling Reluctant Participants and Unexpected Directions
Even with thorough preparation, some participants will give one-word answers or take the conversation completely off topic. Reese reframes these moments as data rather than problems.
- Ask what it tells you that someone signed up but seems reluctant to engage. That reluctance is itself a finding.
- Look for the nugget in whatever the participant is willing to share and follow it, even if it is not directly on topic.
- If a participant mentions something personal during the rapport-building phase, note it. That detail may be the entry point to the most relevant insight.
- Lean into silence. Leaving a pause after a difficult or emotional moment gives participants space to continue or redirect on their own terms.
- Stay calm and keep your face neutral when participants share something unexpected or emotionally heavy. Overreacting will cause them to shut down.
Examples from Practice
Investment platform: the grieving widow
During a research session about financial risk, a participant disclosed that her husband had died the day before. Her husband had set up the investment account and she had never logged in. Rather than redirect to the script, Reese leaned in and listened. The session produced a set of product ideas the team had not previously considered: what happens when an account holder dies and no beneficiary is set, how to help a loved one take over an account, and what educational tools might serve people who have never managed finances before.
Investment platform: the gambler
A man in his early 60s had lost half his retirement savings through stock picking. His wife was asking when they could retire. While risk and confidence were the surface-level topics, Reese dug into what he was getting emotionally from the thrill of gambling. This led to persona work around the investor who needs both the excitement of risk-taking and guardrails that protect long-term financial security.
Parenting resources: the mother who never yells
In a study about parenting resources for millennial women, a participant described a friend who never raises her voice. From that single detail, Reese was able to infer what kinds of content, support, and community might be valuable to this participant. The participant was navigating both the adult friendship and the impact of that dynamic on her child's close friendship with the same woman's child.
Empathy and Demographic Matching
Reese tries to match moderator demographics to participant demographics where possible, but acknowledges that resource constraints often make this impossible. When the gap cannot be closed through staffing, she recommends naming it directly.
I actually said in a very upfront way that I am aware that as a white woman I may not be aware of or face the barriers that they face.
This approach, used during research with Black women about healthcare access barriers, involves more active listening and more explicit reflection back to participants to confirm understanding. The goal is to make the session as much about hearing them as it is about learning from them. She also notes there is a line between empathetic matching and tokenization, and both should be held in mind.
Key Principles
- Step out of your comfort zone. Accept the discomfort of silence, unexpected disclosures, and being on camera. Researchers absorb that discomfort so participants do not have to.
- Preparation enables presence. The more groundwork you lay before the session, the more cognitive and emotional bandwidth you have in the moment.
- Go off script deliberately. The best insights often come from questions you did not write. Being responsive to where participants take the conversation is a skill, not a failure of moderation.
- Pair qualitative data with other data types. Qualitative research should enrich and contextualize survey data or operational data, not stand alone as the basis for major decisions.
- Bring the heart back to stakeholders. Sharing clips or vivid participant moments with teams and leadership builds organizational empathy and connects roadmap decisions to real people.
Transcript
Read the full transcript
Um so we have Sophie presenting leveraging empathy. Um she's the senior manager of strategic strategic insights and VOC at scam. Now Sophie I can stop sharing. Thank you for the intro. I'm sorry that I dove in twice in one morning actually. I'm really enthusiastic. Um so today I'll be talking about how leveraging empathy can help drive insights forward. Uh really focusing on how uh fostering trust with research participants opens up new possibilities. Um thank you Elena for the short introduction. I'm Sophie Reese. I'm the senior manager of strategic insights and voice of the customer at the ski and I'm a social scientist and a voice of the customer leader for product and brand. I've actually founded and grown research um and insights organizations at two midstage startups. I have over 10 years of experience in the product and research industry working with BTOC and B2B companies in a variety of sectors including finance, family law, health and wellness, media, and education. And so I really do have a lot of experience speaking with people on extremely sensitive topics where empathy plays a major role in being able to derive insights. So, this is really about laying the groundwork for successful and impactful moderated research. I'm not really going to talk about at the very end how you may want to present those insights to your own team. Um, really more focusing on how a lot of preparation and setup can be done to facilitate those insights at the end. And this approach may ask you to throw away a lot of what you know today about qualitative research. Um because we are often taught to be very objective and I think with these more sensitive topics that level of objectivity does not always serve the research needs. So, we're going to be talking about practicing empathy, the importance of preparation, really setting the stage for success, giving um participants your full attention, and then I'll talk about some examples where I really found insights um as participants shared things with me. So, empathy is the practice of sharing another person's feelings. Um unlike sympathy where you are sort of acknowledging how someone is feeling, empathy is really about bringing it into yourself and finding that moment of connection and feeling it yourself. It is an absolutely vital part of qualitative research and in my experience it is necessary for a healthy business cycle. But for a lot of people it doesn't come naturally and challenges to empathy can include uh limitations in your own experience. So we're often speaking with participants who don't have the same background as us or the same lived experience as us. And it can be quite difficult sometimes to overcome that. Um, and of course with that is the inability to connect um, if you don't have those similarities or maybe some shared relationships. And then you know I'm going to come back to this throughout the presentation but it really does require 100% of your attention and that can be extremely difficult um, especially if you you know have very limited resources. You're a team of one. Um, but there are lots of other barriers as well. And developing empathy takes a lot of practice. This is of course something that should be applied in your research, but making uh it a part of your daily life is going to really help you uh throughout the work. So things like listening more than you speak and asking a lot of questions, um not making assumptions about the person before you hear from them, looking out for emotional cues. So, uh, changes in their physical demeanor, changes in their tone of voice, um, maybe facial cues can be really helpful. And again, of course, putting yourself in their shoes. Empathy is really about making that connection, bringing it in. And so, those moments of connections where you can find them are really valuable. Again, like I had said, um this may really push you to think outside of what you do today in your qualitative research. The right preparation is everything. It makes it much easier to engage with users and it sets participants up to be much more open from the get-go. Um so it may seem obvious, but it's often overlooked. The best way to ensure that interviews go smoothly and that participants feel comfortable is by setting your study up to do so from the start. This means that at every touch point you are being extremely clear about what you are hoping to um learn from a participant and also what they can expect from you. So how is your recruitment and screener done? Is that something you're doing yourself or with a coordinator or an outside firm? Um, you want to lay the groundwork from the very beginning of the project to make sure that you have alignment throughout. Um, in my team, we try to keep things fairly general in our recruitment emails and screeners. Um, but once participants get to the booking page, we get extremely specific about expectations for participants. Are they going to need to share their screen? Are they going to um, you know, will we want their video on? Do we want them to be in a specific space or something like that? All of that needs to be laid out from the get-go so that when they're signing up, they know what we are expecting to do. Um, and in the confirmation email, in the calendar event we send out, we reiterate all of the expectations and of course let participants know that they can cancel or reschedu at any time if they need. We typically run projects over a series of weeks which also allows for flexibility in participant schedules. Of course, um as the prior presenter said, speed is always of the essence to our stakeholders. So sometimes that's not really possible, but um in that case, I try to plan far in advance and maybe recruit people um more than a few weeks out and then just set follow-up touch points until the call takes place. Um, on my team, we do try to automate everything, but even if you're not able to, the most important thing is making sure you're communicating with participants in advance um, in the way that you say you will and when you say you will. So, if you say that you they'll receive an email from you, um, with follow-up instructions for how to join the call or how to set up their space, especially important if you're doing maybe a remote UX test. Um, do that when you say you will and with at least 24 hours notice. This also allows you to confirm that the time still works. And getting off on the right foot really starts with practice, practice, practice, practice. Um, of course, it makes you more comfortable and it just allows you to be much more natural when you're speaking with participants. Best practice is, of course, always to have a notetaker or an observer with you. If you're in person, that's that may be quite obvious unless you have a very fancy setup. Um, it may be quite obvious to a participant, but if you're on a phone call or if you're doing a video call, um, it's important to let the participant know that there is an observer or a notetaker um, so that they know who's on the call. And especially when you're dealing with difficult topics where a participant may not want to be recorded, that notetaker plays a much more important role. Um, and so again, planning in advance really helps. It's not just a valuable form of documentation, but also frees you up to give your full part attention to the participant. Um, let participants know someone is there. Let them know how their insights will be used. um some of the examples that I'll get to later in the presentation before people shared with me, they wanted to double check that, you know, their voice, their face would never be shared. Um because these were very personal things that they were telling me and being able to confidently confirm that for participants, but also starting the call with that is very helpful. And again reminding participants that they can opt out. That could be from a specific question or from the test on a whole. Um they are not obligated to give you anything. Even if you are incentivizing it, even if you are offering them something, they owe you nothing. They are doing something for you. And then lastly, I think it's always important to start the session with an icebreaker or a series of getting to know you questions. Even if you already have that information about the participants. So if in the screener they provided you information about their family dynamics or where they live, asking those at the beginning of the call to just get comfortable, get to know each other. It can really come in handy later. And then this one is super uncomfortable. No one likes to watch themselves. Definitely the worst part of qualitative research is having to play your own voice back to yourself like a thousand times. Um, but if you've scheduled a video call, even if the participant doesn't turn on their camera, you should keep yours on. This really builds trust and rapport, especially because it's easy for participants to see that you are giving them your full attention. And we go into these projects with specific expectations. However, listening carefully and listening actively, leaning into moments of silence, and being responsive to the direction participants take the conversation, because that's really what it is. A conversation allows you to find the heart. The best insights I find often come under the surface with questions that maybe I wouldn't have thought to ask. Of course, most of us have been there um moderating or observing a research interview and the participant just doesn't want to share. Um it doesn't matter that you did all the preparation. You laid all the groundwork. you set the expectations and whatever question you're asking, you're getting just a single word answer or they're really taking you so far off topic that you're not even sure how you're going to bring it back. Um, starting with the perspective that these moments themselves are moments of insight can be really helpful. You wrote a script, but how can you get relevant information from where they're taking the conversation? What does it tell you that they signed up, but they don't seem to want to be having this conversation? Um, was there something that they mentioned during that kind of getting to know you, rapport building part at the beginning of the conversation um that you can follow up on? Conveying genuine interest and empathy can open up a lot of doors. Maybe there was something that they said that's true for you too. Can you connect with them at that level? Of course, like I said, objectivity is important, but this level of connection and relationship building is really uh valuable. And you know, you only have a short amount of time with participants, maybe 30 minutes or 45 minutes. And so building that rapport really quickly is going to help you derive the most valuable insights. If your session is about the messaging of say a wellness campaign that you're going to run and they haven't been talking about wellness at all, you can't get them to answer the questions, but they mentioned traveling to visit their mother for the first time in three years when you asked if they're looking forward to something in the next few months. That is the insight. What can you follow up on? What can you learn more about? What has prevented them from visiting their mother? How frequently are they in contact? What are they most looking forward to there? There is a wellness story there. There is an opportunity for connection. There is a way to find out how to serve that participant. And if you're really at a loss, go back to the beginning, circle back, ask questions again. Remaining neutral is important, but it's not the most important thing. So, I grew up in New York City and I lived just a few blocks from the World Trade Center on 911. As a result, I have been part of a longitudinal health and well-being study for over 20 years. Each quarter when the researchers get in touch to set up a time to speak, I feel myself just physically tense up. Why? Because the conversation is actually a survey from which there is absolutely no deviation. It takes anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours to complete the conversation. Sometimes it's on the phone, sometimes it's in person, and it drives me absolutely nuts. Since it's just a survey, can't they send it to me so I can complete it on my own time on my computer? Yes, it would be long. But given that the moderator learns nothing outside of the exact answers to the questions she's asking, typically posed on a three or five point scale, why does it need to be done by phone or in person? It's important to reach your research goals, but qualitative research is not just about ticking a box. And if that's all you're doing, there are better ways to gather that information from your participants. Qualitative research is really about learning about the why, the motivations, the frustrations, the reasons for the behaviors, and the beliefs. And in my experience, it's often when we go off script that we learn the most because, as I said before, we may not be asking the right questions. Leaning into the silence. There was supposed to be a little cricket sound, but leaning into the silence is another thing that's very uncomfortable, but very important, especially for those more reticent participants. Um, you really want to be able to leave that moment, give them, let them collect themselves, and see if they're open to offering up something else. So over the last seven years um I have heard some really unexpected things during sessions and that's why when you're it's important to be practicing um and it's also important to make sure how you can make a participant feel heard. These comments are just a couple of things that I've heard over the years and frequently they're kind of but not exactly on the topic. So, how can I both achieve my research objectives and make the participant comfortable? Like for reluctant participants or the tangent followers, I start by finding the nugget, the insight in what they are willing to share. this woman that I spoke to whose woman who whose husband had died the day before. This was a a an interview that was really about um risk and obviously this was not a woman who was prepared to talk about risk I both because of her immediate situation and because she had never considered financial risk before. although she did have an account with us um her husband had set it up for her and she had never logged in. So immediately after joining the call when she started telling us about her husband about her concerns this was not a time to redirect to the stripp script that I had written. This was a time to lean in to make her feel heard and to follow up to see how we could best help her. She's so unsettled. She's had this massive unexpected life moment. What can we do as a product, as a service to make her feel supported, seen, and comfortable? That's honestly a pretty big ask from an investment platform. But what we were really able to do here is leave the test with a whole new set of ideas that members of our team maybe hadn't even considered before because uh we were so focused on thinking about risk and tax strategies and less about what happens when someone dies and they haven't set a beneficiary. How do we ensure that a loved one can take over the account in an appropriate way? What educational tools did we have for those people who maybe had never dealt with finances before, had never thought about an investment before? And this other guy, I mean, losing half of your retirement funds by stockpicking is terrifying. This was also about risk, so obviously he's much more on point. Um, but this was not someone who was 30 or 40. This was a man who was in his early 60s and his wife was starting to ask when they were going to be able to retire. Um, risk and confidence obviously were the base level for what he was talking about. But as I was developing uh customer personas for the investment platform, this guy really stuck in my head. This idea of the gambler who lives for the thrill. And when we were speaking with him, I really dug into what it was that he gets from that feeling of gambling and were there guard rails or were there again pieces of education that we could offer this type of investor so that they could both gamble and secure their futures. I recently ran a study about uh parenting resources for millennial women. And again, I was gifted the opportunity to speak with so many women who wanted to talk about so much more than just the tools and resources they rely on as mothers today. this woman who has a friend who never yells. Um, you know, from just this moment in the interview, I could infer a number of things about the type of content and support she might find valuable and the type of community that might be beneficial for her. She's really struggling not only with the adult relationship, but also with the child relationship. her child and this woman's child are very close friends. And so she really was struggling not only with how to have the adult relationship with her adult friend, but how to make sure that her child could continue this relationship without seeing um you know a negative impact on her. And the biggest thing is always to remain engaged and calm. Overreacting to something a participant says risks ensuring that they will shut down. And re-engaging with things that they've already said is super valuable. So don't harp on the crazy thing. I've had people tell me that they think about tripping their elderly parent down the stairs. Unless it's an actual thing, then you, you know, obviously need to report it. But people are really opening up and they are providing opportunity for you. If you're in person or on video, keeping your face calm and reflecting empathy back while leaving silence for them to continue or move on is extremely important. If you're on the phone, signal that you're listening using vocal cues while leaving that same space. So overall, I think my key takeaway here is to step out of your comfort zone and really put yourself in the participant's shoes. Empathy is the most important thing of this type of work. It paves the way for great insights. Practicing helps you be prepared for any situation, any direction that the conversation goes. And leaving your preconceptions behind can help you be more responsive and empathetic with the participants. Accept the discomfort in all its forms. Whether that's the silence or things that people say or um you know being alone on camera. It's important to accept the discomfort. As researchers, we have to take that on so that participants can feel more comfortable. And then lastly, it is all about the heart. My favorite thing in presentations, and unfortunately I wasn't able to do it here because of privacy, but I love going back to the team or executive leadership with clips from videos or clips from tests where they can really also start to develop this personal relationship with the participants and think about how we can serve her beyond the most tactical things that we're thinking of on our road map to drive our business and our brand forward. And that's it. Questions. So, um, we do have one question already. Um, if anyone else wants to put some questions in the chat or in the Q&A chat, this is a really awesome question. I don't know if you want to leave it. Yeah. Sometimes when qualitative research is done really well, it can end up being almost too compelling. How do you balance getting key insights with rich detail, but also avoid using low-end data to inform massive decisions? This is a really, really good question and something that I talk about with teams frequently. Um, qualitative research is so incredibly valuable and it can sometimes feel too compelling, but it really needs to be paired with other types of work. So for example um can we do a largecale survey and then use the survey as the launching point for the qualitative research um and that way when we are talking about the low-end data or we are talking about you know oh uh of course with stakeholders the question often comes up are 10 interviews really enough can we make a decision here and we should never be making a decision purely on the uh insights generated from this qualitative interview set but we should be using this data to flesh out and make the other data really compelling. So that can be a survey, that can be the operational data that you're gathering from your platform and how can we tie it all together to ensure that we are really um telling one cohesive story that is not overly led by um a single type of data. Um, so the next question we have is, "How do you manage taking notes and remembering key moments of the interviews without interrupting the interview experience?" So, this can be quite tricky. Um, it is one of the reasons that I think having a notetaker is so valuable and I occasionally actually ask multiple people to be notetakers on calls so that I can get different perspectives. I always keep um a little notepad just next to my computer or if I'm in um a testing setup, you know, next to me and I will tell people in advance like you may see me taking a quick note. Um but that's just so that I don't forget something I want to follow up on. Um, and what we also do is for any observers or if I have secondary notetakers, um, I typically send around like a Google form or something afterwards and ask all of the observers to share with me their key moments from the interviews so that as I'm working on the analysis and the reporting, I am really taking in um, all of the moments that different stakeholders and different observers thought were really valuable. We all are there to listen for different things because of our different roles in the company. We're all thinking about different things and so things may stick out to us um you know that are valuable to you. I never thought of it and now that I know it's valuable to you, I can go back. If there is a recording, I do always listen to the recording again and take extra notes. Um, it's of course not always available to you, but if you do have that option, um, I typically listen at about 1.4 speed just because otherwise it takes too long and I hate hearing my voice recorded back, but um, I find that really helpful. Another thing you can do is create a um like a spreadsheet for yourself in advance where you have the kind of key questions that you'd like to answer and you can just jot down either the time in the interview or um you know a couple of words that you heard that fit in that box as you're going through. When you have a recultant respondent, how often do you end the interview early and then how do you make that transition to end the interview early? Um yeah definitely. Um, I it's always disappointing, but sometimes you really do have to. And in that case, because I have laid the groundwork, I do make sure to at least touch on everything that I said we were going to touch on in the interview. Um, but if we're really getting nothing, then at a certain point, I will say, you know, thank you so much. I have asked all of the questions that I have for you today. Um, is there anything you'd like to ask me or any follow-up you might have? Um, and then just end the call that way. I also let people know, um, even though I'm not typically doing a lot of the recruitment, um, I let people know that they do have my email address and that they can follow up with me at another time if that's better for them. And I frequently receive emails from participants after the call with something that they didn't feel comfortable sharing at that time or that they thought of afterwards um because of something that happened in their lives. And I'm able to leverage those additional um data points to drive forward. And that's actually frequently with reluctant respondents. I'll get a short email afterwards. Oh, I thought of this. Um hopefully that's helpful. But yeah, it's always a bummer when you have to do that. Um, we have a couple questions from the YouTube stream also. Um, so if you have an observer on a call with you, should they have their camera on as well? So, actually, although I've spent so much time talking about keeping your own camera on, I do suggest keeping observer cameras off. I think um especially because observers are typically not researchers, especially if you're in a much smaller research organization. Um they may not be as practiced as you. And it can be also quite distracting for uh participants to see them, you know, typing notes away or whatever. Um, and you know, over the last few years, I've tried a wide variety of uh video tools, some which allow you to hide observers, some like Zoom where it's much harder to hide observers. And you know in the end things like Zoom where more people are used to using the tool but where you're less able to say hide the number of observers or something it can be um all the more important just to let people know that people will be joining the call but they'll be keeping their cameras and their mics off. I always have a side slack or a side chat going so that an observer or part um notetaker can let me know if they have a follow-up question that maybe I didn't think of or if I've kind of missed something along the way. Um so this kind of a part two to that question. So if you do not have a noteaker available, what's good practice in letting the participant know that you're using a tool to record notes? So, um, I know that the requirements vary state by state. I do live in New York where under all circumstances, you're not only legally required to tell people if you're recording them, um, but most tools will actually create some kind of audio or visual notification, um, which can be very helpful. So, I build it into the script and um I always say, you know, my general intro, what we're going to be talking about. Um and if I don't have a notetaker observer, I will say uh for ease and so that I can give you all of my attention, I'd like to record the session if that's okay with you. Um I am very clear about what will be done with the recording. it will be stored in you know a private internal server and clips will may be shared with stakeholders but nothing will ever be public. Um, and I then, you know, if they accept, then I turn on the recording device. Otherwise, if not, I will let them know that I will need to be taking notes as we're speaking. And so, um, you know, hopefully that won't, um, negatively impact the conversation, but that it may take me a moment to respond or to follow up. And then I think this is our last question that we have. Um, when you're thinking about empathy, do you use different moderators to fit the demos of the respondents so they can be as empa empathetic as possible? I definitely try to um there is a line between empathetic and tokenization. So being very conscious of that and of course sometimes you don't have that option available to you. you may be um resource resource constrained or your team may not be very diverse. And in that case um it really does come down to all of the practices that I talked about where finding ways to use language to use other types of connection to make people a little bit more comfortable and occasionally if I know that there may be something unique in the situation. So, for example, um I was speaking with a number of black women about the barriers that they face accessing healthcare. Um that's something where going in I actually said in a very upfront way that I am aware that as a white woman I may not be aware of or uh face the barriers that they face. And so through the conversation, it's as much about um hearing them as it is about learning from them. And it I do a lot more followup in that case where I'll say, you know, I'm hearing you say XYZ and I wanted to learn more about this so that we can solve for Y. Awesome. Thank you, Sophie. Um I think if no one else has any other questions then that is it. Thank you so much for having me. Um, I'm also available on LinkedIn and everything.
