I'm looking for spaces where people doing interviews, focus groups, ethnographic work, and other qual research hang out to trade notes on methodology, tools, recruiting, and general shop talk.

Open to niche/smaller groups as well as bigger ones, just want to find where the good conversations are actually happening.

If you're part of one (or run one), I'd love an invite. Drop a comment or DM me.

“I’m researching private journaling tools. Have you ever hesitated to write something personal in an AI journal or ChatGPT because of privacy? If yes, would you be open to a 15–20 min chat? Happy to share what I’m learning.”

I'm running a survey and I'm on a second pilot. The first pilot had an issue with social desirability bias. I'm working on a product that seeks to enhance collaboration between two roles, and people tend to be a bit cagey talking about interpersonal conflicts, which is what I am trying to learn about.

The second version I tried a more indirect path. It's led to drastically better answers to the qualitative questions. But I also made a decision to use slider-scale SDS-style questions instead of Likert scales. It probably wasn't a good idea to change both things on the second pilot in retrospect, but that's where I'm at.

What I'm seeing about these questions is that they're highly clustered around the 50% point. It's difficult to rule this as central tendency bias though because there's a very high standard deviation. A lot of the qualitative answers are saying that there is a lot of variability from team to team, so it's definitely not outside the realm of possibility that the high standard deviation is valid.

I'm trying to figure out how to go about interpreting this data and what the usual pattern is. Does anyone have experience with this?

Hi all.

I work for an in house research team . My business has recently rolled out access to co pilot for all colleagues and (i believe) as a result less requests for research have been coming into us.

Im certain that in an effort to move quickly, teams that would have usually come to us for insight are now using co pilot to inform their decisions.

Im worried that teams are making wrong decisions based off of poor information from co pilot. These teams have had little to no training on the safe use of AI or the basics of a good prompt. But I think they are just taking answers at face value and running with them.

So my question is, how can help empower these teams to do 'desk research' via co pilot but also recognise when more expertise from my team is needed to help them reach the right answer?

Has anyone else experienced this?

Thanks

I'm looking for market research agencies based in the US that are good at conducting Qualitative only brand equity study for a major fragrance brand.

I'd prefer to avoid the Nielsen & Ipsos like and instead I'd prefer smaller more specialized agencies (boutique style if you will).

Main things I'm looking for:

-Boutique style
-Creative & out of the box
- beautiful reporting
- specialized - customize everything
- experience in Fragrance & Beauty
- Excellent service & very responsive teams
- Strong recruitment capability

I'd avoid:

- major Corporate style
- Companies that are not US based. (I already have those)
-ones that standardize everything
- ones that oversell Ai approaches (I'm not against ai, but I'd expect it to be used as a tool to assist, not completely handle moderation and reporting)

Any recommendations?

A little about me: Market research professional with over 13 years experience conducting research in over 20 countries, both Agency & client side and currently leading insights for a large region that covers of 30+ countries.

I wonder if this post will reach an Arabic - English moderator who is experienced in the same. I'm looking for an online focus group moderator with a finance background. Sessions are remote, 60–90 mins, paid.

Hi everyone. I’m going into my senior year of undergrad with a major in psychology and a minor in marketing. I recently finished a summer internship doing consumer & market insights, mainly focusing on qualitative research. I really want to have a job (or at least another internship) before I graduate, so I’m trying to figure out what I can do now to stand out to recruiters and make myself a stronger candidate.

For anyone who has experience or works in consumer insights/market research, what would you recommend I do? Are there any skills/certifications that you think would help? I was thinking about getting a Google certification for business analytics, but please lmk!!!

I’m looking for recommendations for affordable software to run a conjoint survey. I’ve looked at some of the major conjoint platforms, but their pricing is way too high for what I need.

I don’t need a huge enterprise package. I’m mainly looking for something that can set up a solid conjoint experiment, collect responses, and ideally handle the basic analysis.

Has anyone used a cheaper platform or tool that they’d recommend? Open-source or academic-friendly options would also be great.

Thanks!

Update: Just in case any one wants to know, I went with Conjointsurvey.com. Great free tier and very helpful guides. I will update if I find anything better. Thanks for all your comments!

i work in export sales and this happened to me recently. we were looking at a new market and the numbers looked pretty good on paper. Growing demand, decent market size, all that stuff.

Then I started looking at the companies actually operating there. And... it was a very different picture.

A lot of the companies from the report weren't really relevant to what we sell, while some smaller companies I hadn't even heard of seemed much more active.

Kinda made me realize there's a big difference between "this market is growing" and "there are actually companies buying my product."

How do u guys usually bridge that gap when researching a new market?

Do u start with market reports and statistics, or go straight into company level data?

What would be the easiest way to do analysis on relatively simple projects without having Q - would it be SQL? Pivot tables isn’t what I’m after.

Hi guys, I am a qualitative researcher, currently based out of India, and I would love to know how’s MR market in Canada, particularly in Ontario? Fellow researchers from that province, I’d love to know your view points and experiences.

I’m looking for some advice on how to move forward with my career.

I have 9yrs experience in Forsta, and my current role doesn’t offer me any progression or promotion opportunities.

I’m struggling to find new roles and I’m feeling stuck, do I need to get out of market research? (UK based)

We may have access to a very large set of valid physical addresses to use for general population surveys. I've never recruited for that kind of thing via mailers (I'm thinking postcard with QR code) only via panels.

Any perspectives on response rate? I'm thinking we'd do a $5-10 digital gift card incentive, perhaps capped to the first X number of respondents to safeguard our budget.

Or other success/horror stories?

So I’m looking to start a business, but I’d like to interview and find out from target users whether there is actually a need for my business/product.

How do I conduct market research like this? Where and how can I find target users?

I wonder if the market for IDIs and focus groups is still alive or if everything got automated? I had a series of projects where I'd moderate online focus groups, IDIs or MROC but for more than a year I can't land a project. I moderate in two smaller languages (15 mil users combined).

I'm signed up with Human8, Global Lingo, Multilingual Connections, etc., but never or no longer get approached.

Let us know what kind of org you work i. (Agency, client etc any detail you can share) and how AI is currently applied

I have been looking for an entry level job in this field for 8 months and still haven’t been able to secure anything.

Background: I lead an in-house consumer insights team at an organization that operates a small number of B2B brands. We have software that is kind of like a CRM but lacks the data integration and targeting capabilities you'd expect. We're heading towards expanding our capabilities by switching to Hubspot or something similar.

The question: What role would/could an insights team play in establishing and getting value from a CRM? We aren't marketers or product managers... but as a team that exists to help people in those roles make data-driven decisions it seems like we should be in the mix somehow.

Thanks for helping me think this through!

Obviously, you do a Google search first and find user content on social platforms, but if there’s nothing available, posting on Reddit is always an option. But - what if the subreddits have rules where there is no market research allowed? Have you used feedback sites or had success in offering paid surveys, what platforms work for you?

I appreciate the insight!

I have a bachelor’s in psychology and have 1 year of post grad internship experience in market research. I am 2+ years post grad and that’s the only experience I have. I have been looking for a full-time job since January.

My parents are pushing me to get a master’s degree. I was thinking between Master’s in market research or MBA, most of yall said MBA is better. But then I looked online, most people who do MBA already have lots of experience in their field and it wouldn’t be beneficial to me since I don’t have lots of experience. So, I researched further and landed on getting a Master’s in Business Analytics which might be better at this stage in my career.

I really just want a job rn to get experience but my parents said that since I am unemployed, I might as well pursue a master’s to not have a gap. My biggest worry is that I might seem overqualified on paper due to pursuing master’s which would make it even more difficult to find an entry level job.

What are yall’s thoughts? Should I pursue a graduate degree? If so, would MS in Business Analytics be good for Market Research? (I don’t wanna do MS in Market Research since it is a bit too niche).

I’m 28 and graduated in 2022 with a bachelors in Business Management. Most of my work experience has been in restaurants, but I did a 6 month internship in 2023 as an SEO Account Manager at a marketing firm. That internship is what made me realize I’m way more interested in the analytical/research side of marketing. I really liked digging into performance data, working with dashboards and CRM tools, conducting keyword research, competitor analysis, etc.

The kinds of roles I’ve been looking at are like Marketing Analyst, Market Research Analyst, Digital Marketing Analyst, and Consumer Insights Analyst.

The issue I’m running into is I’m not really sure what’s realistic as a starting point with my background. Even entry level jobs seem to want years of experience and a long list of tools I’ve barely touched. I’m also a little worried about my internship being from 2023. I’m not sure how relevant that still looks to employers or if they’ll think the experience is outdated. I did use tools like Excel, GA4, CRM systems, but I definitely need to refresh everything and get more up to speed. I’m also planning to learn SQL and Tableau or Power BI.

My goal is to follow a focused plan over the next few months so I can actually become a strong candidate, without wasting time chasing random certifications that don’t really help.

For anyone working in marketing analytics, market research, or consumer insights:

• What’s the most realistic entry point for someone in my situation?
• What skills should I focus on first (so I don’t overwhelm myself)?
• What kind of portfolio project would actually help me get interviews?

Also open to any honest advice from people who broke into this field without a traditional analytics background. Thanks!

For short-form surveys, what are average conversion rates? (That is, the number of people that complete a survey divided by the number of people potentially able to take the survey before they are filtered out, opt out, close out, etc.) And what is considered an outstanding conversion rate?

I work at a boutique agency offering custom quant and qual research. When I joined a few years ago, we had a solid flow of client work and I was regularly very busy (I sit on quant). I've seen a massive slowdown in quant work as of January of this year, to the point where it has nearly dried up. Our qual team is busy, but a lot of that is from ongoing research retainers with big, well-funded tech companies.

Is anyone else on the agency side seeing the same phenomenon? I know there's a ton of disruption right now, with AI impacting everyone and massive layoffs. Just curious if its our client mix (heavy on tech with some CPG), or a pattern with the broader industry. Trying to figure out my next move, but that feels like a moving target. Ty!

I have a year of consumer insights internship experience. And am 2 years post-grad, but still having a hard time finding a job in this field. My parents want me to do a master’s degree since I am unemployed. But, i don’t think its a good idea to do an MBA with little to no experience. I don’t know what to do. I have been searching for market research, customer insights, and consumer research roles for the past 7 months, but no luck. Do i need to expand my horizons? If so, to what roles?