The start of a year often brings about exciting opportunities and new challenges. As insights professionals begin navigating 2025, we wanted to look back at e-newsletter articles published by Quirk’s in 2024 and highlight a few that touched on interesting ideas or thought-provoking approaches.

This compilation focuses on the following: navigating mental health topics, the survey participant’s experience and data optimization. 

Ethical and effective: Conducting market research on mental health topics 

By Laura Bayzle, The Link Group

“Over the past several years, we have seen an increased interest from our clients to understand mental health better. This has looked different across industries. Among our pharmaceutical clients who are exploring therapies for mental health conditions, there is a need to better understand the emotional and therapeutic journey among patients who struggle with these conditions. Among our consumer clients, there is a need to better understand how mental health may be impacted by things like skin conditions or beauty standards so they can develop programs and messaging for their brands.

“As a result, more of our research projects either focus on respondents with mental health conditions like depression and anxiety or encourage patients to talk about the mental burden that comes with different health conditions or societal norms. We’ve seen that having these conversations through qualitative interviews – or asking these questions in quantitative surveys – can trigger feelings of despair, depression or anxiety among respondents. As researchers, what are our obligations and duties in these situations, and what is the best way to handle them as they come up?” Read more.

Takeaway: There is a need for the marketing research and insight industry to have a broader conversation about how to navigate mental health topics. Researchers working with pharmaceutical or consumer clients on mental health-related studies should be equipped with best practices and guidance. It's crucial to remember that most researchers are not trained mental health professionals and should approach these topics with care and responsibility. This article is an excellent starting point for the conversation.

Are you considering the survey participant’s experience?

By Ben Tolchinsky, CBT Insights

“Early in 2024, I had an itch to evaluate the survey participant experience once again. Has it changed? Has it improved? Are surveys shorter, more enjoyable and more rewarding than they were in the mid-2000s? I wasn’t optimistic.

“To help answer my questions, I joined 16 panels (see Table A), and over the course of many months, I participated in hundreds of online surveys on my desktop PC, laptop, iPhone and iPad. All surveys were taken on the Microsoft Edge browser, and I did not use any survey apps.” Read more. 

Takeaway: Sometimes, it's just as important to consider what hasn’t changed as it is to recognize the progress research has made over the years. If you're always the researcher (quant or qual), take a moment to experience what it's like to be a participant.

How to make 2024 the year you clean up your organization’s data emissions 

By Michael Howard, Infotools 

Older cars, machines and appliances burn petrol, diesel or coal to operate. This has been instrumental in helping us to achieve specific, positive outcomes – powering factories, producing medicines, getting us from A to B. However, we’ve been left with toxic byproducts – also known as carbon emissions. This concept of unwanted byproducts is a great way to understand the efficiencies and outputs of how we use data in this modern age. After all, if fossil fuels powered the past, data is starting to fuel the future (if it isn’t already).  

What are data emissions? 

Data emissions are the unwanted byproducts that are generated when organizations use bad data in their operations or, alternatively, good data garnered through poor processes or the wrong technology. Read more.

Takeaway: Marketing researchers can often answer key questions by recycling or upcycling existing data. So, if you didn’t focus on optimizing or reutilizing your data in 2024, the time is now.