Researching the sensitive subject of sexual exploitation
The Challenge
CEASE (Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation) is a charity with a bold ambition: to expose and dismantle the cultural and commercial forces driving sexual exploitation, focusing on trafficking, prostitution and pornography, and how they are connected.
The goal of this research project was to understand their audiences better, gaining insight into attitudes and behaviour to inform the charity’s future communications strategy and messaging.
What We Did
We kicked off the discovery phase with an in-person workshop to identify audience roles, blockers and potential risks associated with the charity’s mission. This allowed us to develop hypothesis for their 4 primary cohorts and identify challenges the charity faces in relation to engaging with them.
- Young People aged 18-25
- Parents of teenagers
- Secondary school teachers
- Donors
Research activities began with designing a survey that focused on attitudes around online pornography and understanding of sexual exploitation.
A third-party recruiter was used to ensure we engaged with target audiences effectively, removing bias of warm audiences and capturing a wide range of views. The survey results helped refine depth interview discussion guides so we knew we were interrogating the core issue robustly. Our task was to find a balance; to ensure neutrality but also acknowledge that the charity believe there are harms associated with online pornography and related topics.
Many real-life experiences were shared, resulting in rich insights.
Headlines methodologies:
- Mixed methods user research (quant and qual)
- AI tools to support the lead user researcher (inc. data summaries of long form data)
- Personas profiles to help humanise and communicate research findings
Outcomes
Five personas representing the four audience groups – with two for young people as the insights across males and females in this group were markedly different.
They now act as evidence-based tools for the charity to reference when developing future strategy and messaging. Strategic recommendations consisted of priority focus areas for development, broken down into clear actionable points centred on five key areas:
- Evolving the brand
- Telling relatable stories
- Helping improve education
- Offering real time support
- Updating the digital estate
As the Head of Comms, I feel so supported and understood. Your sensitivity and expertise has been highly valued on this project. You’ve articulated things I have been struggling to communicate and the insights you’ve surfaced will strengthen our work going forwards.
Jo Black
Head of Communications
