Toolbox

Agentic AI and Qualitative Research: A Work-in-Progress View

The authors examine how Agentic AI can transform qualitative research. By automating repetitive tasks such as transcription, coding, summarization, theme-generation, and evidence tracking, Agentic AI frees researchers to focus on insight, interpretation, and storytelling. It emphasizes transparency, verifiability, and human oversight, proposing a practical, researcher-centered framework where AI complements rather than replaces qualitative judgment. The authors offer a grounded, practitioner’s perspective, highlighting how Agentic AI enhances efficiency, clarity, and stakeholder trust while preserving the integrity of the qualitative craft. […]

Podcasts

VIEWS Podcasts: Bryony Hancock

In the latest episode of Conversations in Depth, host Doug Keith talks with Bryony Hancock, Senior Strategist at Eighth Day, about her journey from industrial designer to innovation strategist. Drawing on her experience in product design, strategy and innovation, and qualitative research, Bryony explores how imagination, design thinking, and powerful anecdotes can help researchers uncover deeper insights and inspire meaningful action. She shares practical ways to move beyond validating existing ideas to help clients imagine new possibilities. […]

Luminaries

Connecting Bubbles: Collaboration, Belief, and Shaping the Future of Research Associations Together with Anne-Sophie Damelincourt

ESOMAR President Anne-Sophie Damelincourt reveals a striking paradox at the heart of the research industry—and offers some ways that professional associations help solve it. Drawing on her experience as a marketing client, agency owner, and association leader, she challenges researchers to rethink how they approach collaboration, artificial intelligence, and industry transformation. Discover why she believes connecting isolated “bubbles” of knowledge matters more than ever, and why small steps might be more powerful than big leaps in navigating today’s rapid changes. […]

Industry Focus

When Everyone’s an Expert: Qualitative Research in Pet Care’s Fragmented Authority Landscape

Pet care is one of the most emotionally charged consumer categories, and today’s pet parents navigate a fragmented landscape of authority that includes veterinarians, peers, influencers, and digital platforms. Drawing on extensive qualitative research experience, this article examines how shifting trust dynamics reshape pet care decision-making—and why traditional research assumptions often fall short. Readers will gain a deeper understanding of how reassurance, habit, and lived experience drive behavior, and how qualitative researchers can adapt their methods to generate more accurate, humane, and actionable insights in pet care. […]

Travelwise

Kenya’s Calling: Reflecting on Returning, a Journey for Learning

This article reflects on returning to Kenya after more than a decade through the perspective of a qualitative researcher preparing to lead a study abroad field program. Blending personal experience with pedagogical insight, it examines how Kenya’s conservation efforts, community-based tourism, and cultural preservation practices have evolved over time. The piece highlights how qualitative inquiry—through reflection, listening, and positionality—helps students engage ethically with new cultural and natural environments. […]

Toolbox

Leveraging AI to Recruit Qualitative Research Respondents

When traditional methods fall short in finding hard-to-reach qualitative research participants, AI-powered social media ad campaigns can offer a highly effective alternative. These campaigns use AI to target recruits based on specific behaviors and interests across multiple online platforms, as well as help optimize ad visuals, copy, and delivery to boost engagement and reduce cost. Author Tami Wloch shares that a thoughtful, human-guided approach—supported by AI—can deliver efficient, accurate results, helping researchers recruit for qual studies. […]

Book Reviews

Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs in Leadership and Life

Jeff Wetzler’s Ask argues that significant insights, better decision-making, and stronger relationships are often hidden in the unspoken thoughts, feelings, and knowledge of the people around us. His book provides a practical, step-by-step framework—The Ask Approach—to effectively uncover this “hidden wisdom” in both personal and professional settings. […]

Business Matters

The Moderator Reimagined: Lessons from a Season Away

Veteran moderator Judithe Andre draws on her experience as a national board-certified health & well-being coach and wellness studio operator to reimagine what it means to listen. In this reflective, practice-focused article, she explores how motivational interviewing, mindfulness, and behavioral science can strengthen qualitative research. Her integrated approach—what she calls Moderator Methodology—offers a roadmap for researchers seeking to balance presence with precision, empathy with insight, and human care with analytical rigor. […]

Industry Focus

When Grocery Shoppers Say One Thing but Buy Another—A Qualitative Research Approach to Decoding Clean Eating Contradictions

Research expert Carly Fink presents an innovative qualitative framework for understanding the complex contradictions between a consumer’s stated desires for clean, sustainable grocery products and their actual purchasing behaviors. Drawing from extensive industry experience, she provides actionable methodologies, including System 1 techniques, ethnographic interviews, and journey mapping to help brands build authentic trust. Readers will learn practical strategies for designing research that capture real-life decision-making contexts and translating consumer insights into business solutions that align stated values with shopping cart reality. […]