Ciara Browne, Programmes and Campaigns Officer

“Is it warm enough outside to get away with just a light jacket or do I need a coat?”  

“Will I listen to music or a podcast on my way to work?”

“How can I make this radio script resonate best with my audience?”

In our day-to-day, we come across choices all the time and while it can be easy to make a decision based on our gut feeling, we might first need more data like:

•  check the weather forecast before we decide what jacket to wear
•  really consider what we’re in the mood to listen to on the journey to work, maybe we need a high tempo playlist to get us charged up for a full day of meetings, or maybe we just want to feel relaxed listening to our favourite pod to start the day more gently
•  test a script with an audience before we can decide whether it will work or not.

It’s the same idea when planning HSE campaigns – our projects and campaigns are rooted in listening to people living in Ireland. We do this so we can maximise the potential of our campaigns.

When we start a creative project, we work with one of our creative advertising agencies to develop a number of creative options to choose from based on extensive research and audience insights. Creative options include things like radio scripts, ad designs, and they can also be written options to test what phrases and language resonate best. We want to make sure the option we choose is the most suitable and effective. We’re not always the target audience, and even if we are, we all bring biases, opinions and our own knowledge to a project, that sometimes might differ from the audience.

Effective public health campaigns can be a very cost-effective intervention, but it’s also a significant investment. Testing allows us to experiment with different creative routes and elements in order to arrive at one that will have the best impact on the audience. One of the tools we have for this testing is our Pulse Community Panel.

What is the Pulse Community Panel?

Here on the HSE Campaigns team, I’m part of a research project team that manages the Pulse Community. There are two panels on the Pulse Community:

• the general public panel is made up 121 members, varied across gender, age and location
• the healthcare worker panel is made up of 90 members, with a focus on patient-facing roles

We set up tasks for the panel on a wide range of topics during the year that support our decision-making. There are five types of tasks but they mostly involve showing the panel creative options to get their feedback, and asking them questions to see how they feel about certain topics. Depending on the task, we will identify which community panel – general or HCW – is best suited to take part, and in some cases, both panels can be used for the same task. The panel members access tasks through the Pulse online platform where they get notifications of new tasks.

We review the panel members annually to see if there is a need to recruit any new participants to replace people who may have dropped off the panel during the previous year. Adding new faces and voices to the panels helps to ensure we have maximum engagement.

The different types of tasks

In the past, the panel has been used to test radio scripts, booklet covers, taglines and poster designs. The panel is also useful in getting a sense of how people feel about a particular topic, or how much knowledge people have about that topic.

We test creative options with the community panel to see what resonates best and take their feedback on why they like one option over the other.

Depending on the task deadline, budget and complexity, the task types are:

• Engagement task – 1 or 2 clear questions and 1 creative piece
• Rapid insight task – 3 to 4 clear questions and 1 to 2 creative pieces
• Focused insight task – 4 to 7 clear questions and open-ended questions with 1 to 2 creative pieces. Probes for further information
• Medium task – can involve a few different elements like a survey of 10 questions and focus groups
• In-depth task – can involve a few different elements and a ‘deep dive’ on the topic, with focus groups or in-depth interviews and a creative piece that takes more time to review 

Community panels in action

In-depth task: Balancing Stress Workshop videos

In July 2024, we worked with the HSE Health and Wellbeing team to get feedback on plans for an online stress prevention programme, which would be delivered by video, and get their feedback on the first 30-minute video.

A poll was added to the Pulse platform for the general panel and asked simply who would be willing to take part in a stress prevention workshop, and from the 31 participants who took part, 10 were chosen to answer in-depth questions and tell us what they thought of the video.

video informed both the editing stage for this video as well as providing useful guidance for the recording of further sessions. There were also findings in relation to what would encourage participants to engage with the workshop and what they found most appealing; these findings were used to develop the communications plan to promote the workshops.

For interest, click here to view all sessions from the Balancing Stress programme.

Fig. 1 What will encourage people to sign up and stay?

Focused insight task: QUIT booklet

QUIT is the HSE’s stop smoking service and campaign, led by the Tobacco Free Ireland programme in HSE Health and Wellbeing. Every year, thousands of people find support from the QUIT services online, telephone and in person. The QUIT information booklet provides valuable information on how to quit, and what services are available to you to help you quit. In revising this information, we wanted to get feedback from the public on the booklet‘s clarity and tone, what would make it more engaging and the best design. A targeted sample of 10 people from the general panel (7 current smokers and 3 ex-smokers) participated in the task.

The results showed that people generally have positive feelings about the booklet. Most of them mentioned that the booklet made them feel encouraged and interested. It puts together a concise plan and gives strategies for handling cravings. There was feedback on some sections that needed more explanation so the team were able to act on that feedback

Fig. 2 Chosen design for the new QUIT booklet

More about 2024’s panel tasks

In 2024, we ran 13 tasks in total, with 3 of those being in-depth tasks, and supported our colleagues from various programmes across the HSE. We also had:

• 1,119 conversations and interactions with panel members
• 184 hours of chat
• 21 in-depth interviews
• 4 focus groups

We’re looking forward to another busy year, getting feedback from real people to help make decisions that shape our campaigns and communications.

If you would like to learn more about the Pulse community panels, or if you are a healthcare worker and would like to join our HCW panel, please email us at campaign.research@hse.ie.

Check out some of our previous blogs from the HSE Campaigns team, where we have talked about how and why health campaigns are made and how important market research is when developing a campaign.