Seeking Political Consensus in the Middle East

The Challenge

How did a political consulting firm that was hired by a U.S. agency to gather insights in a Middle Eastern country in order to find common ground among people of clashing viewpoints that were leading to violence, actually get people to talk?

The Solution

Civicom Marketing Research Serves was hired to find a means to create a web-enabled scenario whereby the respondents could communicate their individual viewpoints in a private forum from their individual locations. Our proposed solution needed to occur in a way that would protect the individual identities of the participants from one another. We made the decision to recommend we use of the Civicom Chatterbox® Online Community Platform as a vehicle through which individuals could log in from internet cafes.

The participants were divided into six segments based on screener criteria. Participating individuals were given randomized generic log-in credentials to help protect their privacy during their participation in the forum.

Civciom had the discussion guide translated into Arabic and we then programmed it into the Chatterbox platform. The forum was open for ten days. Civicom then translated the forum content into English and then transcribed using our TranscriptionWing™ unit. The client was satisfied that they obtained insights that would enable them to communicate underlying points of view to the U.S. agency sponsoring the research study.