FAQs about working with an education market research company

This article answers all the burning questions you have about working with an education market research company. Is it your first time commissioning this type of work? Then, be sure to check out our handy beginner’s guide to education market research, too.

How much does it cost to work with an education market research company?

What you pay for education market research depends on the scope of your project. Our work is tailored to your needs and the costs depend on the following variables:

Methods

Within the education section, we ask participants to fill out online surveys. This allows us to capture vast volumes of data over a short period.

Project management time

Broadly speaking, this includes meeting time, project planning, and briefing stakeholders.

Participant recruitment

Costs vary depending on how many participants we need and the difficulty of finding them. Recruiting headteachers, for example, is typically more expensive than recruiting classroom teachers.

Incentives

You'll often need to incentivise people to take part and compensate for their time. Higher-ranking participants or those in more expensive regions will incur higher costs.

Moderation time

This is how long it takes to conduct interviews, run focus groups, and moderate online discussions.

Analysis and report writing

After the research, time is needed to interpret the data and generate a report with actionable insights.

Other costs

These may include things like specialist software and travel expenses. If working with non-English speaking participants, there may be translation costs, too.

When you choose to work with Insightful Research, you’ll benefit from transparent pricing. Your project proposal will contain costs broken down in the above categories.

What’s the difference between large market research agencies and Insightful Research?

The main difference is our specialist focus and personalised approach. While larger agencies work across industries, we concentrate solely on the education sector. Focusing on a niche gives us a more nuanced understanding of your industry. This means a more efficient project execution, as well as more relevant and actionable findings.

As Insightful Research is a boutique agency, you’ll be in direct contact with the senior experts running your project. In contrast, with large agencies, your research might be handled by junior staff or become one among many. Our tighter operation means you benefit from more streamlined communication and processes, too.

Do I need to know what sort of education market research I want before working with you?

Not necessarily. Our bespoke approach means you can have as much or as little understanding of what you need. Some of our clients work in market research teams and have a clear idea of what they need. Others have never commissioned research before and aren’t sure what to ask for. Whichever group you fall into - or somewhere in between - we can help you. We'll shape a project that meets your needs, gets the answers you want, and fits your budget.

Do education market research companies need to belong to professional bodies?

There is no legal requirement for market research companies to belong to professional bodies. But, as it’s an unregulated industry, it’s a good idea to look for providers who belong to known associations. Otherwise, you may end up working with the many consultants who say they “do education market research”, or tag it onto other services they provide. As for us, Insightful Research is a member of the Market Research Society (MRS). We're also registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

The MRS is one of the world’s leading research associations and provides a code of conduct for members to adhere to. This gives you peace of mind that we operate to the highest operational and ethical standards. Our MRS membership also allows us to keep up-to-date with the latest issues, tools and methodologies in market research. It proves our commitment to our own learning and development, too. The training run by the MRS allows us to continually improve the service we offer.

Being registered with the ICO means we have processes in place to deal with GDPR and all aspects of data-sharing and privacy protection. We also recently signed up to the Working Well Together charter designed by AURA. This is the association for client-side researchers. Click here to read our blog post on working well together.

How do education market research companies find the right people to take part?

There are several ways education market research companies source right-fit participants, including:

Your customer base

Tapping into your existing customer and mailing lists is likely to be the cheapest and easiest way to recruit participants. Over the years, we’ve learned the best ways to do this, without being invasive or ‘spammy’.

Market research recruiters

These are people who specifically look for market research participants. Just like traditional recruiters source candidates for job vacancies. They’re often, but not always, based in local areas. We’ve built up a large contact list of recruiters who, over the years, have helped us find right-fit participants for a diverse range of projects.

Panel providers

A panel provider is a company that has a large list of people ready to participate in surveys and research. These tend to cater more to consumer markets and not so much to the education and learning sectors. Given this, we set up the Insightful Research Teacher Panel. We now have a list of hundreds of professionals willing to take part in education market research.

Social media

Running Facebook and Instagram ads is a great way of sourcing the right participants as they allow us to target very specific audiences. We’ve also been successful with Linkedin Sales Navigator to find right-fit profiles on this platform. We take steps to vet candidates and verify they are who they say they are before inviting them to participate.

There is often a ‘snowball’ effect when sourcing candidates, too - we ask the first few recruits to spread the word among their network. Click here to read our blog post on how to encourage participants to take part.

Other FAQs about working with education market research companies

Some questions come up so frequently, or can’t be answered in a short paragraph, that we’ve dedicated an entire page to them, they are:

Contact us today for a friendly, free, and no-obligation chat about your project. You can also read more about Insightful Research on our About page.

How can we help?

If you would like to ask our advice, book a
no-obligation 30 minute consultation with us to discuss your research requirements or to simply have a chat and find out more about what we do.

Book a consultation

Alternatively, use the briefing form to start discussing a new project, give Jill Elston a call on +44 (0)7703 462179 or email us jill@insightfulresearch.co.uk

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