07/10/2025 | News release | Distributed by Public on 07/11/2025 18:27
Food systems research-and more generally, policy and development research-often relies on structured surveys, administrative data, or experiments. While these approaches yield valuable quantitative insights, they tend to miss critical qualitative dimensions. One useful qualitative approach is open-ended interview questions. When such responses are collected in participants' native languages, they can provide rich and nuanced information-for example, on the complex local challenges smallholder farmers face.
However, analyzing free-form text can be costly, time-consuming, and inconsistent across analysts. These challenges become even more pronounced when responses are in local or less widely spoken languages.