The Growth Mindset: Building a Lifelong Learning Toolkit for Qualitative Researchers

By Amy Spencer
Co-founder
The Research Heads
San Francisco, California
amy@theresearchheads.com

Introduction: The Researcher’s Toolkit

As qualitative researchers, we dedicate our work to understanding the lives, thoughts, and decisions of others. While at the same time, we still need to turn that lens inward toward our own growth as qualitative practitioners and ensure our own professional growth is nurtured and taken care of. This process can be supported by a toolkit of resources, practices, and specific online communities designed to help us evolve.

This article serves as a one-stop reference for various tips and resources that can hopefully act as a springboard to search for other sources of education. Whether you’re looking for formal training, mentoring/mentorship, fresh sources of inspiration, or, perhaps for you right now, it’s more about finding practical ways to keep pace with technology and trends, this guide will highlight concrete options you can put into practice right away.

You will learn how qualitative researchers, whether part of an insights team or a one-person consultancy, can build a sustainable and engaging program for your own educational needs.

What Counts as Learning?

When we say “learning,” we often picture a more formal experience, i.e., courses, certifications, or conferences. But that doesn’t have to be the case and, especially as researchers, we know that people learn in multiple ways.

•  Passive Learning: Absorbing information from articles, podcasts, webinars, and learning from adjacent industries.
•  Active Learning: Running a pilot project on an unfamiliar market research platform, experimenting with new projective and creative techniques.
•  Incidental Learning: Picking up skills and insights during projects: maybe from an unexpected client request, a challenging respondent, or a creative workaround.

Chances are you’re already doing a combination of all three—intentionally seeking structured learning, actively experimenting, while staying alert to lessons all around us in your daily work.

Building Your Learning Toolkit

While there is undoubtedly a wealth of information out there, having a simple snapshot of some of the available resources can help guide you to something useful. Even with years of experience in qualitative research, it is easy to become settled into established routines without recognizing the habits that have taken shape. Continuing education, whether through a formal course, mentoring, or exposure to new methodologies, offers an opportunity to challenge those patterns. For example, a moderation course might refine your existing techniques, help you reframe questions to be less leading, or simply equip you with new strategies to enhance your practice. Ultimately, the aim is to sustain a growth mindset and curate tools and approaches that align with your evolving career stage. Here are a few proven avenues for further learning.

Formal Training

•  Perhaps formal training is the most common tool when it comes to seeking out how to learn and improve your skills as a qualitative researcher.
•  Professional development courses are offered through QRCA’s Qualology Learning Hub.¹ There you will find topic-­specific research modules you can take at your own pace from QRCA conferences, webinars, and Special Interest Group (SIG) meetings. Many are complimentary or discounted for QRCA members.
•  RIVA Training Institute and the Burke Institute are both widely respected with regard to their focus on moderator training and skill-building.
•  Market Research Institute International (MRII), in partnership with the University of Georgia, offers online, continuing education courses that cover foundational skills and an array of focused areas of expertise for those seeking more advanced training in their careers.
•  Maven.com provides AI-specific courses taught by industry practitioners. An introductory course I recently took with John Whalen covered prompt engineering, where personas were created from AI analysis of transcripts. These personas can then be questioned and chatted with using your AI tool of choice to foster a deeper understanding of the qualitative findings.
•  The learning also doesn’t have to stop once the course is completed. After this course, I decided to build on the tools I’d learned around prompt engineering to create personas. Using specific prompts, I created a “senior qualitative researcher” persona in ChatGPT. I then asked this persona to help me brainstorm a research proposal. Having a persona like this offers different ways of thinking about approaches or even a new spin on words used to describe methodologies. This can also help to ensure we don’t get stuck in a rut. It’s never intended to replace our thinking; rather, it should enhance and diversify what we already know.

Mentoring and Learning Groups

I must admit, mentoring others is probably one of my favorite ways to learn at this point in my career. While mentoring doesn’t have to be formal, per se, it does help to be intentional. However, if mentoring is not for you, perhaps you could form a small formal or informal group, with the purpose of supporting each other. These meetings can take different forms.

•  Mentoring: I have found that being a mentor and explaining why we do what we do and the way we do it is invaluable to my own growth. I have spent time working with Women in Research (WIRe)’s mentoring program² (which offers structured mentoring with experienced professionals for those just starting out or looking for a shift in direction). In each session, less experienced researchers have the chance to ask questions in a supportive environment, and to learn about best practices. Similarly, these conversations often help the mentees to better recognize and verbalize some of their own habits. I have personally found this to be challenging and insightful for my own practice, above and beyond the help I have been able to impart to others. Similarly, larger research agencies can try their own mentoring system by pairing senior and junior researchers for cross-­pollination of skills. This Latin proverb sums it up perfectly: “While we teach, we learn.”
•  Learning Groups: It can feel challenging at times to retain that spark and keep the creative juices flowing. Having a trusted band of two to five researchers who you can meet (online or in person) monthly or quarterly, to share ideas, resources, and challenges is an amazing resource. We ask questions all the time, so don’t be shy to question your fellow practitioners. I’m sure you’ll come away with a tip or two each time you catch up. I know I have.

Fuel for Continuous Growth

Beyond formal training and mentoring, there is a whole ecosystem of content and communities that can support your ongoing development. Curating the right mix of these inputs means you are not just consuming information, you are collecting the kinds of perspectives that spark new ideas and keep you and your work fresh.

•  Newsletters and Books: Reading widely, both inside and outside market research, remains an invaluable way to deepen knowledge. Take some time to digest business and strategy books or blogs that you can follow consistently for fresh content. For example, following Ogilvy’s behavioral unit gave me exposure to expert viewpoints on brand differentiation, book recommendations on creativity and identity, and an online “ideas resource”³ you can access to sharpen your ability to link insights to action. Subscribe to curated newsletters, such as QRCA Connections, Mike Stevens’ Insight Platforms to learn about the latest market research tools, or Fresh Insights Friday by Kelvin Claveria, which recently offered me actionable tips about using systematic imagery techniques to better tap into how people make choices.
•  Podcasts are one of the most flexible ways to keep learning across a wide variety of topics and a great way to hear voices you might not encounter otherwise. However, the key is curation. Start by using keywords to find podcasts you might like, such as consumer psychology, storytelling for business, design thinking, advertising, neuropsychology, etc. Then start looking at who’s behind the podcast: Is it produced by a trusted institution, a research association, a thought leader you respect? Who are the guests: practitioners, academics, or industry experts that bring different values to a conversation or topic? If you enjoy an episode, try searching for other shows featuring that speaker or perhaps stick with that topic to find more podcasts.

Another approach is to look at newsletters you already follow and see if they have podcasts or if the authors of the newsletter have been guest speakers. You can also use social media or the QRCA online community to ask peers what they are listening to. By searching across a variety of topics, following speakers you admire, and leaning on peer recommendations, you will have an “aways with you” classroom that evolves alongside you. Using this approach, I have come across podcasts such as the Stanford Psychology Podcast, The Knowledge Project,⁴ and Ogilvy Podcasts that have helped to inspire me or provided interesting case studies that I’ve been able to share with clients.

•  Conferences: Of course, an article about ongoing learning wouldn’t be complete without the tried-and-tested conferences. Events like the QRCA annual and worldwide conferences, IIEX, and Qual360 aren’t just about the formal sessions, but also about the personal interactions and conversations that spark new ideas and ways of thinking.
•  Online communities allow you to stay plugged into trends and connect with peers. Share and engage with other market research practitioners around the world in a community like QRCA’s very own online community.⁵ Or, if you want something a little different, try the PunkMRX community, which positions itself as a “reimagined, retooled, and rebuilt” market research mindset. It is hosted via WhatsApp, and you can join various sub-groups about career advice, webinars, events, and podcasts. Other researchers talk about the tools they’ve been using and the successes they’ve had along the way.
•  Other Fun Ideas: Consider services like Blinkist. If you’re like me and love books but don’t always have the time to read them all, I’ve found Blinkist to be a great time-saver. It distills nonfiction books into the core essentials in just 15 minutes. You can listen to any number of business books, or gain productivity hacks, at any point in your day (e.g., traveling, later at night) or when you want a quick break.
•  Artificial Intelligence: I know it feels like we cannot have any type of conversation without AI being brought up; however, in this context, AI can be a fantastic learning tool that you can use to literally generate advice on an as-needed basis.
•  Use AI to brainstorm new twists on favorite questions or projective techniques. Renée Hopkins, a fellow qualitative researcher, summed up AI fantastically in a recent QRCA VIEWS article, suggesting that AI doesn’t replace the empathy, context, and adaptability of a human researcher; it amplifies what we can do.⁶ Or, perhaps, go more in-depth and try asking your preferred AI platform to create a learning program for you on a topic you want to know more about and in a learning style that works for you!
•  Ask it to do a deep dive on a specific topic that you want to know about, or ask it to frame the topic from a different perspective. But always keep in mind, AI doesn’t always get it right; use this method with caution.
•  The other way to use AI in the context of a learning tool is to use it to help you digest and glean information in a way that works for you. I’ve asked it to create a podcast of a long, detailed PDF reporting on the state of the market research industry. That way I could listen to it in bite-sized sessions on my own schedule.
•  You can also ask your preferred AI tool to take a market research approach, or perhaps a project type (i.e., concept testing, UX research, etc.) and give it a twist, by using a prompt along the lines of “what might this be like if it were created or approached by Steve Jobs?” Hopefully the new perspective will bring some inspiration to you and what you can provide your team and clients. What could you do with AI to assist you in your ongoing learning?

Closing Reflections

We tell our clients that people’s behaviors are ever evolving. The same is true for us; whether you’re just starting in your research career or are decades in, you’re never “finished” in your learning as a qualitative researcher. Staying curious, consuming content widely, staying current and committed to growth keeps your work fresh, your perspective relevant, and your own passion and enthusiasm alive.

References

1. www.qrca.org/site/educational-training-opportunities
2. www.womeninresearch.org/mentoring
3. www.ogilvy.com/ideas
4. https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-­podcast/rory-sutherland
5. www.qrca.org/community
6. QRCA VIEWS, Renée Hopkins, The State of AI in Qualitative Research—How Researchers Can Benefit, June 2024. www.qrcaviews.org/2024/06/12/ai-in-qualitative-­research-how-researchers-can-benefit