An AI’s view of The State of Insights – September 2023

In September, NewMR conducted a study with research and insight professionals to understand the state of research and insights. We will be writing a report on this study next week and sharing the results, but this week we have been experimenting with the data. On Monday and Tuesday, I presented sneak peeks of the study, looking at what insight professionals thought were the main positives and the main negatives of the research industry. Today, I want to share a summary of the data generated 100% via AI using a tool called ResearchWiseAI.

What are the positives about research and insights?

Yesterday, I shared a word cloud showing a summary of the main things that were worrying research and insight professionals. To balance the picture, this post looks at what researchers and insight professionals see as the positives, answering the question, “What are the most positive things about the insights and research world in 2023?”

What is worrying the world of Insights and Research?

In September, NewMR ran a study focusing on the research industry, looking at levels of optimism and pessimism, topics that were seen as positive and negative, and plans for the near future. This study will be analysed over the next week, and a report will be released shortly.

As a first step in conducting the analysis, I looked at a word cloud of the open-ended comments using NewMR’s Word Cloud Plus. The results are interesting and I thought I would share them as a teaser for the upcoming report.

Asking Demographic Questions – ChatGPT Tip #1

One way to use ChatGPT is to check your questionnaire design by asking ChatGPT to generate a questionnaire. In the example below, I have asked ChatGPT to show me the most important demographic questions to include in a

Who writes the better short story, Ray or ChatGPT?

I wanted to check out ChatGPT4’s story writing. So, here is a quick experiment. First, I write a short story about a dystopian future based on AI and market research. Then, I asked ChatGPT4 to improve it. Below are both stories.

What is an insight? And, why don’t most research projects find insights?

In the many training courses I run about extracting and narrating the story hidden in data, insights emerge as a crucial focal point. One striking observation I’ve made is that there’s no universal definition of ‘insight’.

What are the key differences between qual and quant, and what does that mean for assessing them?

We create standards, codes, checklists, and best practices to separate good research from poor research. However, unless we recognise the differences between the theoretical underpinnings of different research methods, we will likely do a bad job.

Which type of qualitative analysis do you prefer? Why not use an LLM to allow you to use multiple approaches?

When I tackle a project for non-trivial cases, I tend to choose one of these, balancing the strength of the technique with the time it takes. But, with all the fuss about Large Language Models, I wondered if I could leverage multiple techniques on a single project. Here is a simple experiment using ChatGPT4.

Synthetic data is the future of a large part of market research and insights – but the road from here to there might be bumpy

One of the topics generating the most heated debate in the AI/MR/insights arena at the moment is that of synthetic data. Here is my take on what it is, why it will be such a large part of what we do in the future and some of the key steps we need to take.

Most researchers are optimistic about insights

In June, NewMR conducted a study with 270 insight professionals to establish a benchmark for the state of the research industry.

The main message from this study is that the insight professionals we spoke to tend to be optimistic about the state of insights. When we collect the next wave of data later in the year, we will get a better indication of the way things are going. However, it is also important to note that 10% of our participants described themselves as pessimistic about the state of insights.