About LiveQual

Real-time qualitative research over WhatsApp.

What LiveQual is

LiveQual is a research platform for diary studies and experience sampling. Researchers use it to ask people a small number of questions over WhatsApp while an experience is still fresh, rather than weeks later in a survey. Participants reply in whatever form suits them — text, a voice note, a photo, a video or a location — using the messaging app they already have, with no app to install and no account to create.

It is built for research with disabled and under-represented audiences, which is why it works over WhatsApp at all: screen-reader support, voice input and adjustable text are already there, on a phone people already know how to use.

Who you are hearing from

If you have received a WhatsApp message from us, two different organisations are involved, and it matters which is which:

  • The research team running your study decides what the study asks, why it is being run, and what happens to the answers. They are named in the consent information you were given before you joined, along with their ethics approval.
  • LiveQual operates the messaging service that delivers those questions and carries your replies back. LiveQual acts on the research team's instructions and does not use your replies for any purpose of its own.

LiveQual is developed and operated as part of StoryFutures and CoSTAR at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Our messages arrive on WhatsApp from the sender LiveQual. We will never ask you for a password, a payment or your bank details.

Taking part is your choice

  • To stop the messages, reply STOP to any message we send. That takes effect immediately and needs no explanation.
  • To pause instead, reply PAUSE, and RESUME when you want the questions to start again.
  • To withdraw from the study, or to ask for the answers you have already given to be removed, contact the research team named in your consent information, or write to us at the address below and we will pass it on.

Contact

A person reads this address — it is not an automated inbox. If your question is about a particular study, the research team named in your consent information can answer it fastest.

andy.woods@rhul.ac.uk
LiveQual · StoryFutures · CoSTAR, Royal Holloway, University of London.