• Home
• Our Value
  • Unique Benefits
  • The Real Cost of Market Research
  • Featured Research
• Our Expertise
  • The Importance of Qualitative Research
  • What We Can Do
  • What We Have Done
  • Case Studies
• Our Approach
  • CSR’s Unique Approach
  • Listening to What People Say
  • Turning Words Into Data and Action
  • Enhancing Communication
  • Shaping Strategy
  • The Focus Group Alternative
  • Advantages of In-depth Interviews
• About CSR
  • News
  • Research With A Twist
  • The Team
  • Join Us
• Contact Us

The Importance of Qualitative Research

Why is qualitative research important?

The difficulty and complexity of today’s business issues require that research methods capture the rich, nuanced, varied, and sophisticated feedback that your audiences — clients, prospects, employees, and shareholders — are capable of sharing with you. In CSR’s experience, these audiences want to share this feedback with you — if you allow them to express their ideas and give you their advice in their own words.

By far, the best research methodologies to gather this feedback are qualitative in nature. Why? Because qualitative research methodologies:

• Enable participants to say, in their own words, what matters to them and why;
• Provide a forum for participants to express diverse beliefs;
• Result in a meaningful, actionable understanding of participants’ needs and expectations.

Good qualitative research is characterized by:

• Structured, open-ended questions (the same questions from interview to interview);
• In-depth answers unbiased by leading questions (“Please tell me how you decide what to invest in”; not, “Which of the following answers best represents how you decide what to invest in?”);
• Independence from, or reduced reliance upon, closed-ended (yes/no, 1-10, agree/disagree), directive questions, or fragmentary or single word responses (in other words, “machine logic answers”);
• Interviews conducted by highly trained, experienced interviewers who allow participants to fully express their own unique needs and interests and who listen actively rather than code responses or operate menu-driven software while the interview is being conducted;
• Results that capture not only what people want but also why they want it and how they decide among different options that are presented to them.