Worldview Toolkit
Exploring Irish attitudes to overseas development aid
Wave 5 Imagery Research
In addition to Worldview's annual research on sentiments and attitudes towards overseas development aid, Wave 5 also featured novel research investigating the responses of the Irish public to images used by Irish INGO's in their various campaigns. Over 140 debranded images were submitted by Dóchas members which they have used in their communications, advocacy, fundraising, and educational campaigns.
All images were de-branded to isolate the effect of the image and not the organisational logos, also allowing anonymity. Images were categorized and selected from a range of attributes – “active” and “passive”, “happy emotion” and “sad emotion”, and included different genders, numbers of people, and levels of eye contact with the camera – to test how these attributes work in impacting respondents’ emotions.
Quantitative Imagery Research
71 images were selected and inputted into the quantitative survey, where respondents were asked to rank the extent they felt different emotions from looking at the picture, and if they would be willing to find out more about the image or content if it was part of an appeal from an INGO.
Find the full results of the quantitative imagery research below.
Qualitative Research
The results of the quantitative survey then informed which images were used in the qualitative imagery focus groups. Qualitative research enables us to explore the motivational and emotive underpinnings of the survey results. A series of six focus groups took place around the country with different Worldview segments. There was one focus group with each of the following Worldview segments: Global Citizens; Multilateralists; Pragmatists; and the Disengaged. Two focus groups were conducted with the Empathiser group as this is the largest Worldview audience segment, while none were carried out with the Community Champions, as they have similar if not higher levels of engagement as the Global Citizens. This enabled the possibility for two Empathiser focus groups. The objective was to explore issues that catch the public imagination and identify which type of images provoke or inhibit an emotional response and desire to respond.
Criteria for Qualitative Image Grouping
The images selected for the focus group research were split into four groups based on the emotional responses to them and their success in eliciting information seeking. The two main groups were the red group, representing the upsetting images, and the gold group, which represented happier images. In addition, where there was time, the researchers briefly reviewed images that performed better with specific segments (Blue set) and a few of the weakest performers overall (Green set).
You can find the results for the red set here, the gold set here, and the blue and green set here.
Find the full qualitative research results below.