Almost two years have passed since qualitative researcher in Europe was forced by the first wave of the pandemic to go fully digital. There was a marked shift in core approaches – focus groups and in-depths interviews.

The responses have been overall very positive – “no way back” is how the Editor in Chief of Planung & Analyse described it in a 2021 issue focusing on Qualitative Research. Digital qualitative research definitely works, delivers extremely well on all sorts of insights briefs.

But the rules are different. Online engagement approaches aren’t the same as face to face.

And it’s continually evolving. The jury is still out on how creative development tasks, co-creation for example, work online – and how they compare to offline.

As the pandemic – hopefully – recedes, and face to face becomes possible again, knowing when and how to select which mode and method is more important than ever.

Edward Appleton, Katharina Ladikas and Monique Richter take an in-depth look at the shifts and movements in online qualitative research.

We suggest established Best Practice, identify key emerging trends, and list a number of future developments for the qualitative research space.

You can read the German language version here, published on research portal marktforschung.de:

And an English version has been published in the March/April 2022 of leading US Market research publication Quirks Magazine – the cover story, and you can find the article on p. 38:

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