Tools, resources, and training for behavioural research

As a member of the BR-UK consortium, Zinc has been researching how behavioural research capability can be built in UK ventures. This is the second in a series of three blog posts on this research,  and focusses specifically on tools, resources, and training. You can view the first post in the series here, and read the full report which describes challenges to and solutions for building capability for behavioural research in ventures here.

A lot of behavioural research resources already exist, but they aren’t quite working for people.

One of the questions we had when embarking on this research was what training, tools, and resources behavioural researchers, and those who use the findings of behavioural research, might benefit from. In a brilliant demonstration of the importance of mixed methods research, we found that in our survey, the majority of behavioural researchers (>50%) were interested in more training, but our interviews and workshops painted a more nuanced picture. 

During the interviews and workshops, we heard the challenge for some professionals is with finding the time to actually undertake training. In addition, many researchers backed themselves to skill up on areas as needed – which is understandable given the amount of freely available information and support available online. The most pertinent challenge was with execution of new methodologies, and a lack of experience in particular approaches, rather than a lack of access to knowledge. 

“I’ve just been learning on the job all the time. I think not having the right knowledge isn’t the barrier to anything that I do here. It’s always possible to learn and find out how to do something. The barrier is really time and resource constraints.”

“I guess one of the things where it felt like it stalled was maybe how do we do this? Neither of us had really gone that far before too, other than kind of roughly mapping it…with the implementation as well, we perhaps didn’t feel most confident that we had the skills to actually kind of apply what we had done on paper, I guess” 

This suggests that simply adding more training offerings to an already crowded market may not be helpful: we need to think more creatively about this problem. In some cases, peer-to-peer support, or bringing in external expertise to augment the team could be valuable. Given there was interest in our survey for training, but that time may be the main barrier, alternative models to traditional training might be valuable. Furthermore, some kind of curation of existing resources for practitioners in early-stage ventures may remove part of the burden from their journey to upskilling. 

Theories, theories everywhere, but not always one that suits

We also looked at how behavioural researchers in startups are using theories and frameworks and insights from the academic literature in their work. Most were using these in some way, ranging from rarely using them, to consistently at various stages of the startup’s development. However, many found that what currently exists was difficult to access, and some found them not quite fit for their purpose.

The issue of inaccessibility of academic research is not new. While we are seeing an increase in open-access papers, most peer-reviewed academic research is held behind paywalls. Private companies such as startups often don’t have institutional access to journals, and paying for individual articles can be costly. This is a major issue which can block researchers in startups using such research.

Behavioural researchers found some tools and frameworks from the scientific literature very valuable (e.g. ‘ABC of Behaviour Change Theories’, Theory and Techniques tool) and used them frequently in their work. However, some found existing resources not fit for purpose – for example, because they don’t account for the complexities of the “messy” real world.  Some preferred to design a bespoke approach to problems informed by their own expertise. More experienced researchers often didn’t actively use them in an explicit way because they feel that they’ve shaped their thinking and thus they apply them indirectly through their ingrained thought processes and their general approach to the research. We also found that choosing a resource could be difficult. Some did this systematically, but many deferred to tools that they were familiar with. Those with less academic training in behavioural research sometimes found it difficult to find and choose the right framework, and were keen for tools to help them with this. Some had been solving this navigation and selection problem on their own using LLMs to explore existing resources.

“Yeah, academic research is good because that’s again what we’re trained in, right, as practitioners is that you look at academic papers, you cite them to help structure your work, base your work and theory, etc. But that’s not what the real world’s like. The real world’s pretty messy and you’re going to do some pretty quick research as a corporation. That’s the interesting stuff because that’s actually applicable to the day-to-day.”

“Models and frameworks very little, only maybe for communicating if absolutely needed. But from my end they are more impeding me than helping me for the most part because the problems with the model is that it’s supposed make use of the complexity that the domain offers and for me I get a little bit less benefits from a random kind of how do you say generic model then actually building a model for the problem that I’m solving”

This may be surprising to academic behavioural researchers, for whom rigour, validity, and reliability of methods and theories are key. However, if we want behavioural research to have an impact in the private sector, it’s extremely important that the tools are fit for purpose, and can be tailored to the unique needs of these companies. There is therefore an opportunity for the creation of validated theories and frameworks which are specifically designed for these environments, which would likely need to be created through a collaboration between industry-based behavioural researchers and academics. In some cases, even the act of digitizing existing academic tools and making them more interactive could make them more useful for researchers in ventures. Overall, ensuring models, frameworks, academic insights are accessible and relevant to industry could be a great way to build capability for behavioural research in ventures.

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council under grant (ES/Y001044/1) and the BR-UK Consortium.