A Day in the Life of the Full Service Researcher. A Personal Perspective

It’s clear from the 2024 GRIT Insights Practice survey that full-service researchers spend the most time preparing and analyzing research deliverables, a very “hands-on” segment. They are also the largest segment in the survey and the market and collectively (therefore) have the most to gain from DIY tech.

Before we consider the impact of tech on the day-in-the-life of the researcher today, we need to consider some context.

The first wave: the online research revolution.

Around 20 years ago, technologies like survey scripting, panel management, and electronic rewards schemes caused an upheaval. Data collection shifted from offline to online in what seemed like an instant. Turnaround times and costs were slashed, and demand for survey research surged. The supply of skilled researchers lagged, so the industry has had a full and unending pipeline of work since.

The current wave: the democratization of powerful preparation and analysis tools.

Full-service researchers are skilled “jugglers.” They will have multiple projects to manage at any time, all at different stages. The current wave of DIY tech developments that support them where they spend the most time – data preparation and analysis - continues to evolve. Even a few short years ago, a typical day could look like this:

Getting a research design finalized and immediate project management tasks done

Immersing themselves in some data analysis and reporting … getting the data set up in SPSS, exporting tables to Excel, tidying them up, then pasting them as charts or tables into PowerPoint (and while tech was helping them here, still a very manual process)

Helping deliver a report they had prepared the data and analysis for earlier …

… then the client insists they want several filtered re-runs of the same report quickly!

So, it’s back to the SPSS, Excel, and PowerPoint routine, which will most likely continue into the evening.

Today's integrated data analysis and reporting platforms allow researchers to quickly produce a reweighted or filtered report and build advanced analyses, exotic visualizations, and interactive dashboards—and in all cases, faster, more accurately, and more cost-effectively than ever.

The most compelling finding from this year's report is that DIY tech investment has made researchers more productive, putting through more of the same work. It’s yet to cause a shift in how they spend their time, but we contend that their preparation and analysis quality is improving. Regardless, for the researcher dealing with that full and never-ending pipeline, getting through things quicker and easier will be a considerable comfort. And those that best utilize tech will no doubt eventually see their careers progress to more managerial roles.

The next wave: generative AI

The industry has high long-term expectations for the contribution of AI, and this wave is already underway. With examples of automated data cleaning, text coding, analysis, and even summary text generation already in the market, perhaps it won’t be too long before we finally see a shift. The demand for research is unlikely to fade, but if time spent preparing and analyzing data plummets, like offline research did, there will be a new demand for research design and consulting skills to make the most of DIY tech.