Who Should You Survey? The Question That Shapes Every Research Project
Written by: Rachel Carter
One of the first questions we ask when discussing a new research project with a client is also one of the most important:
Who do you actually need to hear from?
It sounds straightforward, but it’s often where research projects start to drift off course. When people think about research design, they tend to focus on methodology, sample size, or questionnaire design. Those decisions matter, but they all come after you’ve decided whose attitudes, experiences, and behaviours will help answer the question you’re trying to solve.
Get the audience right and the findings are far more likely to be relevant and useful. Get it wrong and even the most carefully designed survey can struggle to deliver meaningful insight.
Start with the decision, not the audience
When defining a research audience, it’s tempting to begin by describing the people you want to survey. In practice, it’s usually more helpful to start one step earlier and think about what the research is intended to inform.
Are you trying to understand why customers are leaving? Assess demand for a new product? Explore how buyers make purchasing decisions? Generate evidence for a thought leadership campaign?
The clearer the objective, the easier it becomes to identify the people most likely to provide valuable answers.
A common mistake is defining an audience that feels relevant rather than one that can genuinely help answer the business question.
Broad audiences aren’t always better
There can be a tendency to cast the net as widely as possible. After all, hearing from more people sounds like it should lead to better insight.
In reality, broad audiences often create broad findings.
If you’re exploring software purchasing decisions in large organisations, surveying all business professionals isn’t likely to tell you very much. Speaking specifically to people involved in those decisions is far more valuable, even if the audience is smaller.
Research works best when there is a clear connection between the question being asked and the people being asked to answer it.
B2B audiences are rarely defined by job title alone
In B2B research, job titles are often the starting point. They’re rarely the whole story.
Two people with the same title may have very different responsibilities depending on the size of their organisation, the sector they work in, or where they sit within the decision-making process.
Someone responsible for IT in a 50-person business may face very different challenges from someone with a similar title in a multinational organisation.
This is why good audience design often looks beyond role and considers factors such as seniority, influence, company size, industry sector, geography, and purchasing responsibility.
Behaviour can matter more than demographics
The same principle applies in consumer research.
Age, gender and location can all be important, but don’t always explain why people think or behave in a particular way.
Sometimes the most valuable distinction is behavioural.
Do they buy from a particular category regularly? Have they recently switched providers? Are they existing customers, prospective customers, or people who have never considered your brand?
These factors often reveal more than demographics alone.
Customers only tell part of the story
Many organisations naturally focus research on their existing customers.
Customers can provide valuable feedback about experiences, satisfaction levels, and reasons for choosing a brand. But they can only offer one perspective.
If the objective is growth, it can be equally important to understand the people who haven’t chosen you. Prospects, competitor customers, and non-users often reveal barriers, perceptions, and opportunities that existing customers simply can’t see.
The right audience isn’t always the most obvious one.
Balance precision with practicality
Audience definition is always a balancing act.
Being too broad risks producing findings that lack relevance. Being too narrow can make research unnecessarily difficult, expensive, or slow.
The goal is to identify the people who can genuinely answer the questions you’re asking while remaining realistic about how that audience can be reached.
That balance often comes through discussion, refinement, and sometimes challenging initial assumptions about who should be included.
The people you survey shape the insight you receive
Research is ultimately about understanding people. Before thinking about questionnaires, sample sizes, or reporting, it’s worth spending time defining exactly whose views matter most.
The strongest research projects don’t begin with a list of questions. They begin with a clear understanding of who is best placed to answer them.
When the audience is right, everything that follows becomes more valuable.
Download an Audience Planning Worksheet
Defining the right audience often takes more thought than people expect. Our worksheet provides a simple framework for working through those decisions before selecting a methodology or writing a questionnaire.
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