The 2024 Research Live end of year review asked a diverse roster of insight industry leaders to reflect on the year and look ahead to the future. In the first article of the series, FlexMR CEO Paul Hudson highlights the convergence of qualitative synthetic data with falling sample value as a stand out trend.
Other commentators noted the impact of peer-led research, the resurgance of creative consistency, how surprising election results point towards a complex and fragile macro-environment, cautious spending considerations and disruption in client-side teams.
A Year of Artificial Intelligence and Human Emotion
In this article, Paul reflects, "Quantitative synthetic data is a standout trend– as distinct from large language models (LLM). It’s still a contentious issue, and will remain so for a number of years. But 2024 was the year where it became a mainstream debating point and where real-world experiments and actual use cases emerged. This is still early days, but without serious improvement in the sampling quality/pricing trade-off, I believe synthetic data will continue to gain ground."
Similar thoughts were echoed by Ray Poyner - Chief Research Officer, of Potentiate who noted the timely maturation of debates on synthetic data, as concerns about panel quality rise. Tatenda Musesengwa, Vice-President of Sudiences at Savanta and Co-Founder of Colour of Research (CORe) also highlighted an increase in both adoption and trust of synthetic data within quantitative research and statistical modelling.
These technology oriented reflections were contrasted by those which focused on the human developments of the year - with a particular focus on elections and a complex macro-environment. As Tom McEnery, Board Director and Equity Partner at Opinium commented, "2024 was no doubt the year for elections. The big trend in many parts of the world has been populations deciding that they've had enough, quite frankly. Change has been the word, with incumbent governments booted out left, right, and centre. The big question is: what next? Will people feel better now that they've held the governments they blame to account, or will we see the blame for declining standards of living shift in new directions as we head into 2025?"
Read the full article to discover more, and stay tuned for more reflections - on topics ranging from the mostmemorable research projects of the year, to what 2025 holds.
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Research Live is the world's leading source of industry news, opinions, special reports and feature articles for market and social researchers, data analysts and consumer insight professionals. Covering the latest trends and techniques from behavioural economics to big data analytics, as well as hot topics like polling and privacy. The publication is operated by the Market Research Society.
