What exactly is human-centred quantitative research?

By Josie Harrison

Many of us have spent 15 months trying to understand the data. Our lives have been lived by it; new terms such as the ‘R number’ becoming part of everyday conversation. All the while, hidden within the data, there have been countless human stories.

As many aspects of previous daily life begin to return, new trends are (if you believe the headlines) going to forever change our lives and society as we know it. But will this be a fundamental reset, could months of change undo what have, for many, been deeply ingrained learned behaviours over decades?

While many are happy to give comment on what they “believe” will happen, the quantitative researcher in me is mindful that what the data tells us is more important.

Do you know what you think you know?

There are many disruptive forces at play right now. But organisations should guard against the assumption that everything has changed. Now is the time for organisations to ask questions of data to either validate or challenge established thinking and assumptions.  

Essentially, that means pressing the reset button on your understanding and adopting a “question everything” approach to create a clear picture of what has changed and, crucially, what remains the same. This reminds me of the scientist mindset Adam Grant outlines in “Think Again”, where he advocates the need to “look for reasons why you might be wrong, not just reasons why you must be right."

For example, recent trend reports highlight that family has become more important in the last year. But hasn’t family has always been important to most people? We need to ask ourselves what this really means, and to challenge the idea that recent events have profoundly shifted what family means to people. More useful would be to assess whether there have been any changes in what we do as family groups, or who is meant when we talk about family. True understanding of whether there is a different take on family, family time and feelings about family require a read into the subtext and assumptions that are underlying in data to find the ‘human truths’ through the stories that lie within.

“Data enables organisations to develop a deeper level of insight, but on its own can’t explain the world.”

Applying qualitative approach to quantitative research

Increasingly, gaps in our understanding are being filled by a data-rich world that generates masses of information. People leave digital footprints with every step, though this only gives indications to behaviour, not reason. You can mine data forever and still not understand the ‘why’.

Data enables organisations to develop a deeper level of insight, but on its own can’t explain the world. The importance of layering the psychology of decision making into the analysis of transactional data cannot be underestimated. By analysing data in this way, organisations can begin to build a more detailed and nuanced picture – mapping issues like customer pain points as well as potential sources of delight to drive more meaningful outcomes. Some theories identified through data will hold true, others will not.

“What organisations need now is clarity, the ability to identify priorities, and evidence-led insights.”

Identifying the stories of human behaviour

Human-centred quantitative research excels at providing organisations with deeper levels of customer understanding that can better support effective, strategic decision making. Some organisations now have millions, billions, even trillions of ‘transactional’ data points that can be analysed. But causal assumptions can be made based on these, such as assuming a spike in activity over a weekend is because of a new marketing campaign. But there is often no direct understanding of why certain behaviours occurred, which impacts the ability to influence similar actions in the future.

One of the UK’s leading retailers took the decision to dive deeper into data that on face value suggested that customers were against the removal of telephone helplines. By looking for the threads within the data and adding a layer of qualitative and ethnographic research, the retailer began making sense of the reasons for current contact behaviour. It wasn’t that customers had to talk on the phone – the channel used was not the primary concern. What mattered to them more was a desire to be heard and for the retailer to take accountability for problems. This helped the retailer realise that their planned digital help activity was viable if delivered with the right tone and capabilities that met customer needs.

No hiding from the benefits

Advances in quantitative research are allowing researchers to humanise data, borrowing from qualitative methodologies. Online surveys are mobile-first and more bite-sized, making them easier to ‘consume’. Traditional Likert scale measures replaced by ‘emotion-wheels’ and sliders are designed to capture implicit and explicit responses and allow respondents to share their feelings in a way that is highly intuitive.

What organisations need now is clarity, the ability to identify priorities, and evidence-led insights. Quantitative research presents the framework for understanding. But the real step-change will only come from being able to turn data from a collection of past behaviours into foresight that can inform objective, reasoned decision making. That will not come from capturing a snapshot in time, but from maintaining an ever-evolving customer understanding, and thinking differently about how to capture behaviour and attitudes to provide indicators of real changes in customer needs.

To contact Josie to discuss your quantitative and qualitative research needs, email: josie@solutions-research.co.uk