When you’re collecting survey data, time is of the essence. Participants can give you high-quality data for only about five minutes. After that, they tend to lose focus and interest—and the data quality plummets. To maximize research effectiveness, you need to collect the most data possible from each participant in the shortest amount of time. Paring down a lengthy list of questions can be challenging, but the effort pays off in a better-quality data set.

But when you’re limited to explicit-only questions and responses, you’re unlikely to gather sufficient data in five minutes. It might appear to happen sometimes, but in such cases your participants are probably rushing through the survey.

Traditionally, the number of participants is the primary measurement of significance when you’re conducting a research study. But while volume of participation is key, it misses another dimension—the quality of that participation. Was the respondent overwhelmed by your questions, uncertain about their answers, or worse—bored and distracted?

We live in the age of big data. It’s a fast-moving, ever-growing ocean of information that can easily overwhelm those who are leading research projects. How do you gain access to the highest quality of data? And once you have it, what will you do with it?