Synergies is frequently engaged to conduct surveys for clients, including environmental scans, stakeholder research, industry perspectives on key issues, and targeted surveys to collect quantitative information as inputs to economic modelling.
We undertake both qualitative and quantitative surveys:
Qualitative research is primarily exploratory in nature. It is used to gain an understanding of people’s underlying reasons, opinions, and motivations. It provides insights into preference formation or helps to develop ideas or hypotheses for potential quantitative research. Qualitative research is also used to uncover trends in thought and opinions, and aims to tease out customer beliefs and rationale for supporting or rejecting a particular proposal.
Synergies uses focus groups as the main vehicle through which to undertake qualitative research. Other approaches include open-ended survey methods and netnography (see consumer sentiment analysis). The latter utilises verbatims from social media platforms such as TripAdvisor, Twitter and Facebook to gain insights into exchanges between consumers with common interests.
Quantitative research presents questions to respondents with the purpose of generating measurable data to formulate facts and uncover patterns. Statistical methods are often used to describe the relationship between variables and test the statistical validity of these relationships. Quantitative data collection methods include various forms of surveys – online surveys, paper surveys, face-to-face interviews, telephone interviews, opinion polls and so on. The data collection approach is more structured than qualitative methods, and relies on a establishing a statistically representative sample of the population of interest.
Examples of our survey work include:
Case study
Synergies was engaged by the Queensland Farmers’ Federation (QFF) to undertake a water demand assessment and to assess the economic and financial and commercial feasibility of the NuWater project – a proposal to supply recycled wastewater from treatment plants in South East Queensland to agricultural producers in the Lockyer Valley and on the Darling Downs.
Case study
In 2016, Synergies was contracted by the Australasian Centre for Rail Innovation (ACRI) to undertake an inaugural survey of stakeholder perspectives about the challenges, opportunities, and future strategic directions for the rail industry. The survey was designed to assist in promoting dialogue within the industry and serve as a baseline against which to measure future trends in issues and priorities.