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Practical writing on qualitative research and how teams use AI-moderated interviews without sacrificing rigour.

• Featured

  Best AI qualitative research tools in 2026

  The best AI qualitative research tools conduct adaptive interviews, probe vague answers, track topic coverage, and return structured analysis. This guide covers the leading options, what separates genuine AI interview tools from survey wrappers, and how to evaluate them for your research programme.

  Published 2026-04-28 · comparison

• Featured

  How many qualitative interviews do you need?

  The traditional answer is 8 to 15 interviews per study, constrained by moderator time and budget. That ceiling was always operational, not methodological. With 100 interviews available every month, the question changes from how many can we afford to run to how should we allocate them across everything we need to learn.

  Published 2026-04-21 · methods

• How to write a qualitative research discussion guide

  A discussion guide is the structure that makes a qualitative interview productive rather than a conversation that happens to be recorded. It defines the topics, the sequence, the depth required at each topic, and the questions that open each section. A good one produces consistent, comparable sessions. A poor one produces transcripts that are hard to analyse and findings that are hard to trust.

  Published 2026-05-05 · methods

• The research interview has a scale problem. Here is what is actually causing it.

  The moderated research interview is methodologically sound but operationally broken at scale. The ceiling was never a property of qualitative research as a method. It was a property of how the method has always been executed. Removing that constraint does not change what qualitative research is. It changes how much of it gets done.

  Published 2026-05-01 · thought-leadership

• What is thematic analysis?

  Thematic analysis is a method for identifying, analysing, and reporting patterns of meaning across qualitative data. It is the most widely used approach to analysing interview transcripts and is suitable for researchers at any level of experience. Done well, it produces findings that are grounded in what participants actually said.

  Published 2026-04-21 · fundamentals

• Qualitative vs quantitative research: when to use each

  Qualitative research investigates why people behave as they do. Quantitative research measures how many people behave that way. They answer different questions and the choice between them should be made on what you need to know, not on which method your team is more comfortable with.

  Published 2026-04-17 · fundamentals

• What is ResearchOps?

  ResearchOps is the discipline of making qualitative research repeatable, consistent, and scalable across an organisation. It covers the systems, processes, and infrastructure that allow research teams to run more studies with higher quality and less operational overhead. Without it, research quality depends on individual people rather than reliable systems.

  Published 2026-04-14 · research-ops

• What is qualitative research?

  Qualitative research is the systematic study of human experience, behaviour, and meaning through direct conversation and observation. It investigates why people behave as they do, not just how many do it. It is the primary method for understanding the motivations and mental models that drive decisions.

  Published 2026-04-10 · fundamentals

• What is an AI research interview?

  An AI research interview is a qualitative research session conducted by an AI interviewer rather than a human moderator. The AI follows a structured study design, conducts a live adaptive conversation, probes vague answers, tracks topic coverage, and produces a transcript and structured analysis when the session ends.

  Published 2026-04-10 · fundamentals

• Can AI interviews produce rigorous qualitative research?

  Yes, under the right conditions. AI interviews produce rigorous qualitative research when the study is well-designed, the research question is specific, and the AI interviewer probes for depth and tracks coverage rather than just asking questions and moving on. The conditions matter more than the method.

  Published 2026-04-10 · thought-leadership

• How to design a qualitative research study that actually works

  Most qualitative research fails before a single interview runs. Vague objectives, topics that are too broad, and no clarity on what a good answer looks like all produce shallow findings regardless of how the interviews are conducted. This guide covers what good study design actually requires.

  Published 2026-04-10 · methods