Diary survey studies help market researchers dive deep into their users’ mindset

1. Diary survey studies help market researchers dive deep into their users’ mindsets. A qualitative market research method can offer deeper insights into customers’ minds. Such methods are beyond tangible numbers and data, focusing on studying users’ perceptions about a product, service, or event. For instance, focus groups where a market research consultant discusses a topic with a group of selected members. Likewise, a diary survey study, very popular in psychology and anthropology, is another method used in market research. What is a Diary Survey Study? Diary Study, a qualitative research method, helps market researchers understand people’s behavior in various situations around the same context. For instance, a complete log of users’ day around their food habits to maintain good health and a nutritional diet. Users record their actions, views, behavior, and mental state every day over a period in a diary, journal, website, via a form, or an app. There could be many similar methods to log interactions and information that don’t need constant assistance from the research team. Such self-reported user data may fluctuate circumstantially for the same question. In fact, such variations make a lot of sense for the analysts to understand daily deviation and changes in a user’s behavior. The traditional method of diary studies required users to maintain a journal with recorded events daily using text. With digital everything, users can record events and their experiences with photos, video, or audio journaling through a mobile app for a brand or by filling out a form daily. Why You Should Use Diary Studies A diary survey study is an elaborate and long-term research method. It records minute details of your users’ day-to-day lives. And hence, you can gain a lot from this technique. (i) You can collect data using the longitudinal technique. Diary studies provide everchanging data on the same topic over a long period, making every change perceptible. Such studies can provide detailed feedback—although not as precise as but—similar to a field study on rather a smaller budget. (ii) Data that is temporal and relative to the history provides you inputs for moment marketing and understanding of your users’ current mental status. Such data also explains what brought about changes in the users’ behavior. (iii) Participants log the freshest data, their in-the-moment feelings, and facts about your brand, product, service, or day-to-day lives. This helps to collect unaltered data. (iv) Because of in-the-moment data collection through digital modes like apps or websites, amendments and alterations are hardly possible. So, the truth remains as is.

2. (v) Collecting data around the same topic over days helps establish correlations, patterns, and changes in a natural environment. (vi) A diary study helps to monitor micro-moments that affect the big decisions of the users. This data collection method also gathers diverse experiences of your subjects on the same topics. You can also perceive how various tiny and big moments affect your buyer’s journey. (vii) A diary study removes a research team’s intervention. It allows your users to express themselves more freely than in a focus group. You can obtain qualitative research data on sensitive topics people might be hesitant to talk about in a focus group. (viii) Dairy studies capture motivations for a user’s behavioral changes and what influences them to make or change their decisions. (ix) Diary studies also free a lot of your time while your users keep recording their experience for a long period. Meanwhile, you can focus your energies elsewhere. (x) Through video logs, diary entries, and app data, you can manage to convince your stakeholders to make better decisions. Such liberty is missing in the quantitative analysis when you only see numbers but no concrete underlying proofs because of the summarized data. The downside of Diary Studies Although diary studies might sound like a perfect method to understand your users’ journey from many aspects, the method usually runs long and hence, has its downside. Most limitations run in this method because the data is self-reported and based on a user’s memory.

3. (i) You can’t trust everything logged by a user. Users might record wrong information, even if unintentionally. What if a user forgets to log the daily data? In that case, they would record on a different day, and the quality and correctness of the data depend on their recall value. Such instances create blind spots for the researchers. (ii) Users might record untrue answers to be more likable or social. They might log wrong data to avoid looking irrelevant or undesirable. Manual errors are bound to happen under unmonitored circumstances. (iii) Such studies run for a longer duration. So, your users might get bored or tired of logging day-to-day information. (iv) Lots of nontangible data or data that can’t always be quantified might seep into the logs. So, you need a lot of effort and time to understand and draw conclusions from such data. Such methods don’t work on simple scenarios with a binary answer. (v) Your participants might fall into the noncompliance net of policies related to the study. Because of all the above mentioned reasons, backfilled and forward-filled data don’t represent the longitudinal data but rather similar insights that may be wrong. (vi) Diary studies demand a high budget to keep the users engaged. How Opinionest Can Help With Your Market Research With certain limitations, it’s best to couple your diary studies with quantitative research methods like online surveys. And we can help you with that. Opinionest, an emerging and one of the best online survey sites in

4. India and globally, creates online surveys for various industries and clients. Please contact us today to uplift your market research practices with custom-designed surveys.