How to Best Incorporate Emojis Into Your Next Study

Researchers have long awaited a way to better capture the emotions of their target audiences.  Whether capturing more feelings about a brand, or obtaining opinions around political candidates or ideas, traditional scales have never been able to convey the emotions behind a response.

Lately, there have been several announcements regarding new tools being released to assist researchers’ understanding of respondent emotions and reactions.  EMI recently partnered with one of these providers to test how and when it is best to incorporate emojis to gain better insights into respondent emotions in a market research setting.

We did some scaling research, testing emojis versus a more traditional 10-point scale on a variety of topics, from the president’s job performance, to how likely a respondent was to purchase a specific product.  What we found was that while emojis can be a great way to gain better insight into a respondent’s emotional state of mind on a specific topic, it does not translate to all topics well.

If you are considering using emojis or just want to better understand the emotions of your respondents, you now have new options to consider.  If your study topic is a traditional market research topic, it may be best to stick to your current, more traditional rating scale.  But if your topic is about politics or other subjects that can be divisive, or you want more context around a particular topic, you may achieve better results using an emoji scale.

To learn more about how EMI can help you incorporate emojis into your next study, click the button below.