In-Person Research Is Dead; Long Live In-Person Research
A guide to choosing research formats that actually serve your objectives
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87% of market researchers worldwide state that at least half of their qualitative research is carried out remotely or online. That’s big.
Yet I do hear the comment: "But is digital research really as good as in-person?"
I think we're asking the wrong question here. While it might be tempting to argue about what format is “superior”, we should make sure we don’t miss a fundamental shift that's already happened. When the COVID-19 pandemic forcefully shifted research online, we were shown truths about both formats that we had been too tradition-bound to see.
Choosing the "best" format isn't about technology or tradition, but about understanding when each approach unlocks the right types of insights.
Why In-Person Isn’t Always Better
Ask most people about digital versus in-person conversations, and you'll hear predictable responses:
"In-person builds better rapport"
"You lose non-verbal cues online"
"Digital is more convenient but less engaging"
"Nothing beats face-to-face interaction"
🚨 These aren't necessarily false, but they're dangerously incomplete.
They assume that in-person is the gold standard and digital is a compromise. This thinking can lead you to missing the unique advantages that digital conversations offer – advantages that can actually produce better conversations in specific contexts.
What We've Learned From Three Years of Forced Experimentation
When the world went digital in 2020, we (re?)discovered several truths:
1. Equalising Contributions
In physical group conversations, dominant personalities often control the discussion. The person with the loudest voice, the highest status or the most confidence tends to shape group opinion. But something cool happens in digital settings: the playing field levels out.
👩🏻💼 In-person dynamic: Julie, a senior leader, unconsciously dominates the discussion. Junior team members defer to her opinions, even when they disagree.
🙋🏼♂️ Digital dynamic: With everyone in their own box on screen, hierarchies flatten. The chat function gives quieter participants another channel for contribution. The "raise hand" feature creates structured turn-taking that wouldn't feel natural in person.
Junior or less confident individuals tend to share a lot more in digital events than in-person ones, because the digital format and digital engagement platforms (things like Mentimeter) rebalance and redistribute engagement.
2. Achieving Maximum Comfort
One might assume that participants will feel more comfortable in person, but my experience tells a different story. When discussing sensitive topics, many participants actually prefer the psychological safety of their own space, whatever and wherever this might be.
Consider these scenarios:
💸 Conversations covering financial stress: Participants discussing debt or money troubles often feel more comfortable from their own homes, without the added stress of traveling to an unfamiliar location.
🏥 Healthcare research: Patients sharing experiences about chronic conditions appreciate being in their own environment, with their medications or medical devices readily available to access and, potentially, reference.
🏢 Workplace culture studies: Employees feel safer criticising company culture when they're not physically in the office building.
In practice, assuming that in-person conversations and rapport are better often overlooks how location impacts psychological safety.
3. Minimising Unnecessary Cognitive Efforts
Travel can be both inconvenient and cognitively expensive. Participants who navigate traffic, find parking, locate your building and settle into an unfamiliar environment arrive with depleted mental resources. And, in fairness, the same applies to you!
Here’s an example from my experience: Once I had to travel to Brussels to carry out interviews across different European Commission buildings. This required me to walk around the city, catch taxis and navigate completely new buildings, over the course of two days. By the time I got to each actual interview, my energy levels were understandably low!
Digital participants start fresh - or, at least, have the opportunity to do so in theory (this is of course not the case if someone is in back to back Zoom calls…). And they can join from their preferred environment, which overall can translate to:
More thoughtful responses
Better recall of specific examples
Increased willingness to engage in complex discussions
Extended attention spans
The Researcher’s Compass
Rather than artificially deciding that one format superior, let's have a think about the cases in which each method shines.
Digital conversations excel when:
🌍 You need geographic diversity: A single focus group can include participants from multiple cities, bringing diverse perspectives impossible to achieve in person.
📆 Schedules are challenging: Parents can participate after bedtime. Shift workers can join from break rooms. Busy executives can squeeze in sessions between meetings.
👀 You need to see diverse real environments: Home tours, workspace observations or product usage in diverse natural settings become possible. A participant can literally show you their messy drawer or overflowing inbox.
📹 Documentation matters: Everything is automatically recorded. Transcription is cleaner. Screen sharing enables real-time collaboration on documents or prototypes.
💸 Sensitive topics are involved: The psychological distance can make difficult conversations easier. Participants maintain more control over their environment and can exit if needed.
In-person conversations are preferable when:
👃🏼 Physical interaction is essential: Product testing that requires touch, taste, smell or complex manipulation needs you to be there in person.
⚡️ Group energy drives insights: Brainstorming sessions, creative workshops or team-building research benefit from shared physical energy - and usually require more time than people are willing to spend staring at a screen.
💻 Technology is a barrier: Some populations struggle with digital tools, making in-person more inclusive for these groups.
😳 Deep observation matters: Reading full body language, observing micro-expressions or noting environmental cues requires physical presence.
⏳ Trust-building is essential: Ethnographic studies or longitudinal research often benefits from in-person relationship building.
What If I Want Both?
Sometimes, you actually don’t have to choose. Think of these examples:
Digital-first discovery: Start with digital sessions to explore broad themes across diverse participants. Follow up with in-person deep dives for promising areas.
In-person core, digital expand: Conduct core research in-person with primary user groups. Use digital to efficiently include edge cases or secondary audiences.
Format switching: Use different formats for different research phases. For example, digital for initial screening, in-person for co-creation workshops, digital for follow-up validation.
I would recommend you consider these mixed approaches when you have a bit of experience. This is mainly because you’ll find yourself with lots of information being captured in different ways, at different levels of depth. This introduces data management as well as synthesis challenges, which is not something I’d recommend to someone just getting started with this type of work.
Rapport Isn’t a Room - It’s a Choice!
The organisations gaining genuine customer insights aren't debating formats but simply asking: "What makes people tell the truth?" Sometimes that's the safety of their own home during a digital interview. Sometimes it's the energy of a room full of peers. Sometimes it's both. Sometimes it's neither (e.g. what if a survey might be better?).
I can tell you that obsessing over methods is a distraction. You don’t need a perfect format to get breakthrough insights: you need to learn how to read the moment. You need to learn to sense when someone needs the camera off to share something difficult, or when a group needs to be in the same room to build on each other's energy.
The format wars are over. Not because one side won, but because the entire battlefield is irrelevant.
Your next research project doesn't need the "right" format. It needs you to stop treating methods like religion and start treating them like tools. Pick the one that fits the job. Or pick both. Or invent something new.
The truth you're seeking doesn't care how you find it.
I'm Andrea, a management consultant with over a decade of experience across industry and academia. I work with commercial, non-profit, academic and government organisations worldwide, helping them capture meaningful insights through mixed methods research.
I write about practical frameworks to help you discover what others miss. My main goal is to translate complex concepts into techniques that readers can use immediately.