We know that evidence and insight are the bedrock of positive decision-making. We also know that sharing knowledge is the only way for communities to survive, let alone thrive.
Therefore, we are passionate about using our expertise to produce research reports and blogs that inform the sectors we serve, as well as our own market research community.
Free and independent research reports
Alongside bespoke research designs that address client needs, we produce our own publicly available research to inform and inspire organisations within our three core specialisms.
Learning
Explore free reports from Shift Learning around UK alumni engagement and teacher perspectives on the impact of COVID-19.
Sustainability
What do consumers really think about sustainability? Dive into our Shift Sustainability research reports to find out.
Membership
The first of our open-access Shift Membership reports covers virtual conferences in a post-COVID world, but there are more to come!
Public-facing research reports
Some of our work is confidential, as clients develop new products and services, while most is only used by their internal teams to inform strategy. However, we are proud that some of our research reports for clients have been made public, including those below.
Nature – Global postdoc survey 2023
We have worked with Nature on many research projects over the years, including a global postdoc survey in 2023, from which they published two publicly available articles on their website:
A third article around postdoc career optimism post-COVID can be accessed via subscription.
Springer Nature – The State of Open Data 2023
The State of Open Data – run as a collaboration between Springer Nature, Figshare and Digital Science – is the longest-running longitudinal study into researchers’ attitudes towards open data. Shift managed development and initial analysis of the global survey, which received over 6,000 responses in 2023.
Cengage – Student Voices 2023
We conduct regular Student Voices research with Cengage, a global education and technology company. In 2023, the goal was to explore student needs and motivations, with the aim of identifying ways to help the HE community deliver improved study experiences and outcomes. We conducted desk research and an international student survey before compiling two reports.
Wellcome – Global researcher interviews
We supported the Reimagine Research campaign for Wellcome by conducting 90 cognitive interviews and a global survey of over 4,000 research professionals. The final report is available on the Wellcome site and you can read more about our research in this Shift Learning case study.
Market research method blogs
We also believe in sharing knowledge with our own community to help us move forward together, so we hope you find the following reports and blogs useful.
Incentive insights: boosting the appeal of research participation
In this age of survey fatigue and data distrust, we’re often asked how to boost survey response rates. So we decided to explore – and then share – the impact and interactions of a few factors, including incentives and interest. We conducted a survey with over 1,000 participants, before using conjoint analysis to explore different scenarios and build a simulator to play what-if games. You can download this PDF report to discover what we found.
Mobile ethnography: tapping into market research success
We have a huge opportunity to combine increasing smartphone proficiency with traditional ethnography to explore respondents’ behaviours, attitudes and perspectives in real-time, at their own pace. We regularly use the Indeemo platform to conduct mobile ethnography and have partnered with them to blog about our approach, including case studies showing the benefits of this method.
Stamping out survey sinners and cleaning up your data
We created a survey exploring attitudes towards climate change and peppered it with a few tricks we’ve picked up (and are happy to share) in order to identify the bots, cheaters and disengaged respondents that produce poor-quality responses and hamper survey analysis. Which could you use to weed out survey sinners?
You can find out about other research we have conducted for clients across our three specialisms by visiting:
You can also visit our About area to explore who we are and our quality and values.
