See how Prolific conducted 500 qualitative interviews in 72 hours.

“Were we able to conduct more interviews than usual? Yeah, a hundred percent, like far, far, far more. Again, mostly because of time saved, like I cannot commit to the time to do 500 interviews myself”

Andrew Gordon, Senior Research Consultant, Prolific

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Challenge

With a snap general election quickly approaching in the UK, the need for nuanced insights into nationwide voter sentiment and policy priorities has never been more pressing. Traditional quantitative polling provides a numerical temperature reading, but it often lacks the depth required to truly understand human context, emotional undercurrents, and authentic voices shaping decisions across all demographics. Needing to interview 500 people and collect rich qualitative data within a short period of time presents a formidable challenge. The urgency of the election timeline, combined with the need for high-quality, in-depth responses, demands a solution that is both efficient and capable of capturing the intricate details of voter perspectives.

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Solution

The Prolific team built a Voiceform (survey) in a matter of minutes. They combined voice response questions with AI Question Probing to probe the respondent on specific topics similar to a real face to face interview. From there, Prolific easily integrated their proprietary panel and sent out a Voiceform to 500 people.This allowed Prolific to start capturing qualitative insights simultaneously from hundreds of people at the same time. This AI-driven moderation enabled consistent and in-depth responses, capturing the intricate details of how voters truly feel. The collaboration between Prolific and Voiceform provided rich, qualitative insights necessary for determining voter sentiments, addressing the urgent need for understanding how voters are truly feeling before the election.

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Result

By leveraging Voiceform's advanced capabilities, Prolific was able to save an estimated 15,000 hours typically spent on  manual interview processes. A qualitative interview typically takes the Prolific team around 30 minutes as such Prolific was able to conduct 500 interviews in 3 days. In addition to expediency, the Prolific team was able to increase their sample size which improved data quality as well.

The final result? A detailed paper, “Beyond the numbers: Unpacking UK political sentiment through qualitative polling” written by our partners at Prolific.

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“Let's say I wanted to run 500 interviews on this same topic but using traditional face-to-face methods. I would, you know, optimistically estimate 30 minutes for each of those interviews, so 30 minutes times 500 is an awful lot of hours, whereas here I'm able to essentially release those 500 people and they complete it with Voiceform very quickly.”

Andrew Gordon, Senior Research Consultant, Prolific