Year’s end is usually a time for introspection. At the end of every year my wife and I, as do many people, review where we thought we’d be at the beginning of the year and compare it to what actually happened. It might be a useful task to apply the same introspection to a very busy year for the field of survey research as a whole, given the highly touted new trends in the field.
And what a field, with so many things promised at the beginning of the year. For most of the year gamification was the latest thing, the best way to get quality engagement and results in surveys. But, for all the hubbub, there has also been significant pushback as researchers struggle to incorporate the concept and its implications and requirements with the day to day business of actionable results and on budget projects.
Behavioral economics, closely related to gamification, has made further inroads into the field, both as a term to be discussed and also as a useful tool. Here at WPA, some of our most popular products for years have been tools that help clients discern stated preferences from actual behavioral shifts and it’s good to see that the industry as a whole is starting to catch up. This area will increasingly separate the firms that know what they are doing from those who are, shall we say, mailing it in.
However many of these emergent methodologies are seeing limited interest. Tools like prediction markets, eyetracking, and mobile research are mostly vendor driven, as researchers struggle to become comfortable with their implications. Some of these will undoubtedly see more traction in 2012.
On the whole then, the takeaway is that big things really are happening in the industry, just not as fast as predicted. Which, when you think about it, is almost always how large scale changes occur. The industry will engage “big data” more in the future, we will increasingly move away from simple stated preference in the pursuit of better tools to monitor behavioral shifts, and we will probably make mobile research a larger priority as well. On the whole then, 2011 appears to be a year of significant change and development, just not as much as some people initially thought it might be.
