When you’re involved in qualitative market research, you must go deep into your customer mindset and remove biases as much as possible. And a diary study is a great market research tool to affiliate collecting qualitative data. Diary studies help market research teams learn your participants’ in-moment thoughts.

Your audience records data digitally on a trigger or as close to that trigger as possible. This helps to pull out hindrances that come while they recollect data. Records they log are freshest and, hence, truest to their behavior. But, of course, they shouldn’t be hesitant to capture the correct thoughts for social pleasing.

Hence, here is a quick step-by-step guide for conducting a diary study that brings out the right data.

Steps to Conduct a Successful Diary Study Survey

Let’s assume you’re setting up a hobby institute aimed at retired people so they can spend their time happily. Here should be your steps:

    1. Plan and Prepare

Log the true facets of your user experiences. Prepare your questions and decide on the length of your study. The duration can be for a week or even longer, say a month. You need your users to log the answers as soon as they feel bored or start an activity that makes them happy. So, provide them a way to capture their in-moment activities and experiences.

     (i) Decide the length of the study,

     (ii) Zero down on the method: digital diaries, physical journals, website forms, or something else. Also, finalize if your users can afford the cost or if you can bear the expenses of tools,

     (iii) Questions you need to ask your users,

     (iv) Frequency of log collection: This can be flexible so that your users don’t stop their daily activities or work,

     (v) Define a budget: Diary studies sometimes get expensive because it isn’t simply filling out a form. You may need to hire people for this and invest in the tools for logging data.

    2. Recruit

Longitudinal studies cater to gathering deep insights and not numbers. Data that needs experts for analysis, not raw facts that can be represented in graphs. Hence, your recruitment should be thoughtful.

Instead of calling any user who has used your product or is interested in it, you need to set strict filter criteria. Thus, you would select limited but better respondents. For this, segment your audience wisely and as sharply as possible.

In our example, we should select retired citizens interested in spending time chiseling their hobbies. Don’t recruit a person whose hobbies aren’t in your mentorship program. Sampling is one of the key factors in refining the data being analyzed.

     (i) Prefilter profiles to match the sampling criteria,

     (ii) Focus on quality and not quantity,

     (iii) Segment as deeply as possible and select your participants from each bucket,

     (iv) Drop the candidates who seem uninterested or playing for the money,

     (v) Discuss the rewards you’re offering to your respondents. After all, your respondents should get paid to take surveys online in return for their time and efforts,

     (vi) Onboard them to set expectations, and make them familiar with the process and feel at home,

     (vii) Let them know your contact information or helpdesk details to reach out in case of issues.

    3. Log

Using a physical diary is interesting; data can’t be tampered with and is easy to use. But you may need to handle a lot of data at the end of the study, and don’t forget the various handwritings you will need to squint at. You can use digital methods like emails, WhatsApp, online forms, or social media.

Logging is the main event in any diary study. So, offer as much support during this activity.

     (i) Let the users know when they need to log in and how,

     (ii) Trigger-based logging, for instance, starting a new painting, captures the mental state of the respondents,

     (iii) Allow them a window to log data, but don’t let them slack. Collecting data from memory is risky for the integrity of logs,

     (iv) Share your expectations and dos and don’ts for the tool,

     (v) Whether you expect them to create a photo, video, or audio logs as well or texts would suffice,

     (vi) Help them know all the triggers they should consider for logging,

     (vii) What wouldn’t be considered in the log and what would be,

     (viii) Keep in touch with your participants and motivate them to keep going.

    4. Follow-Up

Market analysis with a diary study doesn’t stop your work with data collection. We recommend having follow-up interviews with them. You should do these once the logging activities get over:

     (i) Set up personal interviews. You can filter your participants who offered great insights, something unique, or something you weren’t expecting in the study. Such interviews help the market research consultants to get the right inputs for a product satisfaction survey.

     (ii) Don’t let the follow-up opportunity pass as only an interview. This is the perfect chance to thank them and strengthen your relationship for a long-term partnership.

     (iii) Discuss the roads ahead in the study, and assure them how valuable their hard work is for you.

     (iv) This chance also opens doors to understanding their overall experience with the study. Learning what can be improved in your diary study strategy can help you better your processes for the future.

    5. Analyze

Having a vast repository of data with you is great. Now the analysis is the biggest challenge.

     (i) Sink in your teeth or get help from an expert team to wrangle the data,

     (ii) Track patterns in the data and look out for trends and anomalies,

     (iii) You may have a benchmark from the industry or your previous conclusions. But don’t ignore the chance to explore new benchmarks. Then compare your data with whatever benchmarks you have achieved,

     (iv) Discard anything that isn’t relevant or is creating confusion in your study.

     (v) Most longitudinal analyses don’t come up with numbers but patterns. Tag your data accordingly and analyze it based on these tags. For instance, in our example, you might come up with hobbies and gender patterns, and locations.

     (vi) Share data with stakeholders and communicate with your team for improved insights.

How Opinionest Can Help with Diary Studies

A diary study is usually a lengthy process. And before and after phases are also complex with the preparations and data volume. Opinionest can help you with logging the daily records using online forms. We specialize in conducting surveys and are one of the best panels to conduct paid online surveys. Should you have a query, contact our team here.