Over the past couple of years, I’ve often been asked to do
desk research. And often my initial (and purely internal) reaction has been unenthusiastic. But it’s also something
that I’ve done a lot of just lately, and done pretty successfully at that. So what’s
the hesitation? Why do I instinctively worry?
I think it’s because there’s less control with desk
research. If you’re designing a survey or focus groups, you know the outcome
you want, and you can design questions to help you understand that. You might
fund that your audience doesn’t have the answers, but you’ll have all of the
data/reasons for why that is. You’ll get a complete picture.
With desk research, you don’t have that control. What you
can find will depend on what’s been done, what’s been published and what’s
available. The exact answer you want may simply not be there.
And I maybe worry that people don’t value it as much. They view
desk research as “How good at Google are you?” And, of course, there’s some truth
in there, but it’s more like “How persistent at Google are you?” For every
source you report there are 10 others that looked good, but offered nothing.
But I know where to find good demographics, salary, competitor employer information,
so experience plays its part too.
My increasing comfort with desk is a realisation that it’s
just the same as the other qual and quant. It’s all about telling a story. (And
ideally it’s about shaping that story in advance, so that we report on what we
know we can know). A story of what you were able to discover, of what isn’t
available, of what the absence tells you. A story of what you can know AND what
you can infer. Because that way – like with all research – you start to elevate
through Data-Insight-Knowledge-Wisdom. And that’s where it has value. And
that’s where I start to get enthusiastic about the work!
