Monthly Archives: September 2011

After writing the first article about the growing use of DIY online collection throughout the market research industry, the next topic to throw “out there” is whether research techniques as we were taught (some years ago now!) are becoming redundant, i.e. is the industry in transition and as a result being “dumbed down”? Without doubt, the software we now use is far more sophisticated than anything imaginable 10 years before and as a data processing pro it is great not to be embroiled day in day out with writing syntax scripts to merge codes, clean data or generally spend an imbalanced amount of time on data quality. The software we can now use has pushed the creative and intellectual boundaries associated within a  project. But if the software being employed is so advanced, then the adverse affect could be that the basic needs of the researcher have also changed. ‘Back in the day’ the research role was more rudimentary, with probably too much emphasis on basic tasks of questionnaire and/or analysis specification creation. There was an element of involvement in data integrity which meant they needed to get “down and dirty” alongside their data processing co-workers and understand the data, … (read more)