Are interviewers still required?

Online research has become increasingly popular in recent years whether it's large quantitative studies, online group discussions or even in-depth interviews. There are undeniable advantages in terms of speed, lower costs and also convenience for the respondents. So, the question arises - is there any need to do research as it was done in the fieldwork in the past, using interviewers?

At ppm factum Research, we still keep an interviewer network. It was not easy to maintain during the Covid 19 pandemic, but now it appears that traditional research using interviews between interviewers and respondents is not yet completely off the table. How else would we have been able to implement e.g.

• Survey among Ukrainians who fled the war
• Survey of service providers for addicts
• Survey of customer satisfaction with an in-store purchase that was just made
• Survey among the homeless (in cooperation with field workers)
• Survey in a small Prague locality where decisions about future construction are being made

It is obvious that in many cases it is not possible without interviewers, especially if the target group for the survey is somehow limited. It may be a geographical limitation (small territory), specific social groups, the need to find out the current sentiments in the field, etc. Therefore, we believe that because of our interviewer network, which has been operating continuously since 2004, we are able to cover many areas that simply could not be surveyed using an online questionnaire.