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.
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.
Reaction-time methods tell you the gut response; surveys tell you the reasoning. Each has a blind spot the other covers. The strongest designs 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.
The most common way to weaken a study is to pick the instrument first. Begin with the business decision the research has to inform, and let that choose the method.
Behavioural Science
The Say/Do Gap: Why Stated Preference Misleads
Treat stated preference as one input, not the answer. Where a choice is made fast and emotionally, measure the doing — not only the saying.
Ask people what they prefer and they answer with their slow, deliberate, justifying mind. They decide with a faster one. Respecting that gap is the difference between a tidy chart and a true one.
Measure the Automatic Response: The Decisions People Can’t Explain
Measure the automatic response, not only the articulated one. Reaction time and instinctive choice reveal the fast, associative drivers a questionnaire can’t reach.
A great deal of choice is fast, automatic, and emotional — driven by associations the respondent can’t narrate. If your method only captures what people can put into words, you are measuring the smaller half.