Questions clients ask before an engagement.

We offer both standardized packages and fully customized research solutions. Our standardized packages provide cost-effective options for common research needs like customer feedback analysis, product research, or employee experience studies. These include predefined methodologies and deliverables but can be tailored to your specific context. For more complex or unique research needs, we develop fully customized solutions that align precisely with your objectives, data sources, and organizational context. This might include specialized analysis frameworks, a codebook built around your industry's terminology, or findings delivered in the format your existing research and reporting processes use. All solutions, whether standardized or custom, include consultation with our research methodologists to ensure the approach meets your specific needs.

It depends on scope, the volume and complexity of the data, and whether the data already exists or still needs to be collected. We agree a schedule with you during scoping and write it into the proposal, so you know when to expect findings before any work begins. Most projects follow the same general path - consultation and scoping, data collection or preparation, analysis by our team, review and refinement, and delivery of a report with every claim linked to the responses behind it. For ongoing research programs, we agree a regular reporting cycle with you.

Our team analyzes virtually any form of text-based qualitative data, including interview transcripts, open-ended survey responses, customer reviews, social media comments, support tickets, and focus group discussions. We can also analyze audio and video by first transcribing it to text. For specialized data like medical records or technical documentation, we build the codebook around the domain's terminology and context. We can work with content in multiple languages, though our deepest experience is with English; we will confirm what we can support for your languages during scoping.

Traditional qualitative analysis relies heavily on manual coding and interpretation, which can be time-consuming and subject to individual researcher bias, and becomes impractical as the number of responses grows. Our approach pairs experienced analysts with computational tools so that every response in a large dataset can be coded, not just a sample. Our team directs the analysis, reviews the results and interprets the findings, and every theme links to the responses behind it, so you can check any finding against your own data. Unlike fully automated tools, people make the analytical judgments and stand behind the findings.

Machine-assisted qualitative analysis combines traditional qualitative research methods with language models and other computational tools to analyze unstructured data such as interviews, open-ended survey responses, and customer feedback. It makes it practical to analyze every response in a large dataset rather than a sample. In our work, analysts direct and review the analysis, and every theme is traced to the responses behind it, so anyone can check a finding against the data.

Our pricing is flexible and scoped to your specific needs — the volume and complexity of data being analyzed, the depth of analysis required, the frequency of research (one-time vs. ongoing), and the level of customization needed. We offer project-based pricing for discrete research initiatives and ongoing partnership models for continuous analysis programs. All engagements include methodology customization, expert review, and dedicated support. We provide a detailed proposal with transparent pricing after a free scoping call.

Our deliverables are customized to your needs but typically include a combination of the following. For thematic analysis workflows: research reports with executive summaries and detailed findings, with every claim linked to the responses behind it, data visualizations including thematic maps and sentiment analysis charts, actionable recommendations based on the findings, the coded data so your team can run its own analysis, and presentation decks for stakeholder communication. For decision analysis workflows: influence diagrams and decision matrices showing how stakeholders make decisions in different contexts. For the causal belief workflow: causal maps showing how different factors contribute to a common outcome. For all ongoing research programs, we provide regular insight reports and trend analyses showing changes over time. All deliverables are designed to be accessible to both research teams and business stakeholders, with appropriate levels of detail for different audiences. We can also deliver findings in a format that fits your existing reporting.

We use several layers of checks. First, every theme and finding links to the responses behind it, so any claim can be checked against the data. Second, experienced researchers review and validate the themes and patterns the analysis surfaces. Third, we use triangulation methods, comparing findings across different analytical approaches to strengthen validity. For critical projects, our analysts can hand-code a sample of the data in parallel and report how closely the two agree. We also document how each finding was produced and how strongly the data supports it. This approach combines the scale of computational analysis with the contextual understanding and interpretive skills of human researchers.

We handle your data under the agreement we sign for each engagement, and we are glad to work under your organization's NDA and data protection terms. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and access is restricted to the team working on your project. We can remove or mask personally identifiable information before analysis, and the agreement sets how long your data is kept and when it is deleted. If you have specific security or regulatory requirements, raise them on the scoping call and we will tell you plainly whether we can meet them.

Yes. Our team handles sensitive and confidential data under the agreement for each engagement, and we're happy to work under your organization's NDAs and data protection agreements. Before analysis, we can remove or mask personally identifiable information (PII) and other sensitive data points. If your data is subject to specific regulations, as health or financial data often is, tell us during scoping; we will set out in writing how your data will be handled, and say plainly if a requirement is one we cannot meet. We can also provide documentation of how your data was handled for your compliance and audit records.