Best practices
How we think good research should be done — the principles behind the platform, stated plainly enough to argue with.Data & Confidentiality
When to Withhold: Why Total Transparency Isn’t Always the Responsible Default
Be transparent about your methods and your limits — but choose opacity deliberately where exposing your logic or your clients’ assets would hand an advantage to the wrong people. Then say exactly where you drew the line.
Good research is honest about its methods and its limits. That is not the same as exposing every asset and every line of logic on devices you do not control. Knowing the difference is a discipline worth naming.
Obscure First: Pseudonymising Confidential Information Before You Analyse It
Pseudonymise confidential information before analysis, not after. Obscure identities at capture so the sensitive form is never the stored or shared form — and keep the key that re-identifies people separate from the data itself.
In behavioural research the open-ends and respondent records carry the real confidentiality risk. The best practice is to obscure identities at the point of capture — so the sensitive form is never the form you store, share, or feed to a model.
Data Quality
Research Design
Pair Implicit With Explicit
Combine implicit and explicit measures. The reaction-time signal gives you the instinct; the stated answer gives you the rationale. Read them together, not in isolation.
Different methods provide different forms of evidence. The strongest studies use them together.
Start From the Decision, Not the Questionnaire
Define the decision first, then design backward. The question picks the method; the method should never pick the question.
Research is most valuable when it helps you make a choice. Start with the decision you need to make, then work backward to the evidence required to support it.
Behavioural Science
The Say/Do Gap: Why Stated Preference Isn’t the Whole Story
Treat stated preference as one source of evidence, not the final answer. Where behaviour matters, measure behaviour directly whenever possible.
What people say matters. What people do matters too. The two do not always align. Understanding that gap is often the difference between measuring an opinion and understanding a choice.
The Answer Is Only Half the Data
Treat response time as data, not noise. The speed of a response can provide information that the answer alone cannot.
Most research records what people chose. Behavioural methods can capture something else as well: how quickly that choice was made. Sometimes the answer is informative. Sometimes the time taken to reach it is informative too.