Quantitative Research

One of the major challenges of this project was fieldwork needed to be completed within three weeks, in the month of December, and to be finished before physicians left for their holiday vacations.

The other challenge was that the project required the M3 team to recruit for a specialty with traditionally low response rates. Coupling that with the short timeline made this project uniquely challenging.

M3 assigned a team of expert project managers in the US and European M3 offices to focus on their respective markets. The internal M3 team collaborated with the client during a kick-off meeting to confirm the objectives and approach, determine the scope of the procedures to be covered, and reinforce the time constraints of the study. To supplement our proprietary panel of physicians, we leveraged external partners to recruit additional respondents to meet the requirements for this unique project.

The panel and recruitment teams used M3’s access to AMA licensed physicians to invite targeted oncologists to join the panel and consider participating in the research. Advertisements were also placed with Multiview to ask oncologists treating appropriate patients to participate in the study. Oncologists completing only part of the short survey were followed up with to complete questions over the phone.

M3 Global Research project managers across all markets were in daily contact with each other, and with the panel team to track progress and adapt their approaches as necessary, as as requested by the client team. The project managers played a critical role in coordinating efforts across several pathways daily, to ensure there were no duplicated respondents, remaining mindful of the fast turnaround required.

This highly strategic approach across multiple markets meant that M3 was able to leverage considerable resources to deliver this project. Extensive local knowledge was essential in recruiting hard-to-reach respondents through multiple channels, and M3’s international team of project managers were a key asset, with challenges managed on a real-time basis, without time zone complications.

Despite the challenges associated with the project, not least the limited universe size and traditionally low response rates, the M3 team delivered over 700 completes. A flexible approach to a well planned strategy was essential, especially given the tight deadlines and time of year.

Given the additional complexities of real world methodologies, delivery of target volumes of patient record forms (PRFs) and patient self-completion questionnaires can be challenging.

Patients are not compensated for the time it takes them to complete the paper surveys, and the administration involved in returning them can cause overheads at a practice level, for physicians and their staff. Care providers are required to identify appropriate patients and complete PRFs that match the patients filling in questionnaires. This involves review of patient records and can also be labour intensive, as not all are electronic or easily accessible.

Physician respondents are also relied upon to onboard the relevant patients and ensure they’re fully briefed. Some also feel uncomfortable asking their patients to participate.

Using one fieldwork provider across multiple markets ensured that there were economies and efficiencies of scale and scope. And there was a single project team, it meant that the client only needed a single point for briefing, and the project team was able to able to take learnings from successful markets and apply them to other countries to ensure efficient delivery.

The scale of M3’s proprietary panel ensures that respondents meet all the screening criteria and are less likely to be routinely participating in real world studies, which is key to guaranteeing robust data.

Another key point of differentiation of the M3 approach to real world is the level of care and attention given to the physician and patient recruitment and information packs. These are designed to educate and inform, ensuring that respondents are clear on the aims and objectives of the research and what’s expected of them. They also serve to reassure that information collected is treated in accordance with M3’s extremely rigorous privacy policy, and in line with the ISO 20252 certification. The workload overhead for physician participants is reflected in the compensation, with bonus payments available for high completion.

Working with M3 Global Research to deliver this real world project successfully resulted in extremely high client satisfaction. Patient record form and patient self-completion questionnaire return was exceptionally high, with over-delivery of targets for both.

Recruitment of physician respondents was 21.5% above the target, and delivery of PRFs and patient self-completion questionnaires was 120% and 117% of their respective targets. The client was delighted with the high quality data delivered by M3 along with the over-delivery of targets, and fieldwork that was completed ahead of schedule.

A key consideration was concern around the ethics of asking frontline healthcare workers to participate in market research at a time of sustained professional pressure. Primary market research had been undertaken separately to survey 31,384 HCPs globally about their willingness to participate in market research, with a positive response rate for online quant at over 96%. This confidence, combined with a lack of incentive, and a clear introduction which explained the sponsor’s ambitions in terms of their contribution to the COVID-19 effort, satisfied both teams that appropriate measures had been taken.

An additional consideration was the speed of turnaround needed to ensure that large scale actionable insights were available at the earliest opportunity. These requirements needed to be factored into the research design.

Following discussion with the research sponsor and understanding their research aims and objectives, M3 recommended that the research take the form of an online quantitative survey due to the volume of data, and the need for rapid results. As there was no incentive offered to respondents, the length of interview (LOI) needed to be carefully balanced with delivering on all research objectives. M3 designed the questionnaire for review by the sponsor and assembled a team of experts to deliver the research, including:

• Translation and language services to coordinate translations so respondents could participate in their native language to ensure full comprehension and engagement
• A senior project manager to ensure recruitment and fieldwork were delivered in a timely manner and to coordinate all stakeholders from design, to soft launch, and full launch
• Sampling experts to ensure a robust, representative sample and coverage across:

• Both high income countries (21) and lower-middle income countries (8)
• Primary and secondary care specialties

• Global procurement who engaged global partner panels with comprehensive coverage in target markets
• Quantitative programming experts to programme the survey and deliver specified cross-tabs including breakdowns by:

• Primary and secondary care
• Geographical location
• Patient co-morbidities

Fieldwork in English language launched within four days of receiving the brief, followed by translations. Reporting on the physician results began while the patient fieldwork launched, with initial results and analysis provided to the University of Birmingham team within one week of their initial brief, which allowed them to start shaping their thinking on test development. Final raw data and a summary report of results and findings were supplied to the team for their own analysis.

COVID-19 presented an urgent need for novel diagnostic assays to establish the presence of, and exposure to, the virus. Understanding perceptions and confidence in testing, on a large, global scale, enabled a new phase of test development that incorporated the opinions of both healthcare professionals and patients. The result was the development of highly sensitive ‘finger prick’ blood tests that detected antibodies even in mildly symptomatic cases of COVID-19. The impact of testing also informs broader benefits to the economy and safer relaxation of lockdown restrictions.

Fast delivery of the fieldwork (7 days in field) and analysis of the results meant that the team at the University of Birmingham could produce antibody tests secure in the knowledge that they met physician and patient preferences. A paper “Health care workers’ confidence and preferences for diagnostic assays for SARS-CoV-2: a global study” co-authored by both teams, discussed the findings of this transformational research, and was submitted to the peer reviewed journal ‘Frontiers in Public Health’, with the manuscript accepted for publication in January 2021.