Survey Research & Consumer Insights Expert

What you'll do

An AI research organisation wants its models to understand what makes a survey rigorous, and it needs practitioners to show it. You review surveys, and AI-generated survey content and research reasoning, against professional standards.

The checklist is the one any seasoned researcher runs in their head:

• Question wording: leading language, ambiguity, double-barrelled items, broken response options, ordering effects, respondent burden
• Structure: screeners, eligibility criteria, flow, skip and display logic, scales
• Error and bias: sampling, measurement, response and selection bias, and whether the data will be interpretable for the intended population
• Fielding: recruitment, quotas, sample composition and data-quality controls

Many of the problems have no single correct answer, so the deliverable is a clear written rationale: what is wrong, why it matters, and what you would change.

Who fits

The ad goes out of its way to say you do not need to be an academic methodologist. Five backgrounds are named: market research and consumer insights, survey methodology, behavioural science, UX and customer research, and polling or social research.

The ideal profile:

• 3+ years in one of those fields, with real hands-on survey design or fielding
• A strong grasp of questionnaire design and the common sources of survey error
• Panel, sampling, screener, quota or fieldwork experience (highly valued)
• The ability to critique a methodology, not just execute a questionnaire
• Strong written explanations and comfort with judgment calls on incomplete information

Tool familiarity (Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, Alchemer, Decipher/Forsta, QuestionPro) helps but is not required. Titles the ad singles out include Senior Research Manager, Consumer Insights Manager, Survey Methodologist, Behavioural Scientist and Research Director.

What it pays

A flat $120 per hour. That sits below Mercor's Healthcare Survey Research & Pharma Insights Expert listing at $140, which asks for pharma-specific experience; if you have that background, compare the two.

Payment is weekly via Stripe or Wise. H-1B and STEM OPT candidates cannot be supported.

Worth knowing

Good:

• $120/hour flat, strong for a practitioner rather than PhD bar
• Explicitly open to industry researchers, not just academics
• No country restriction is published
• Active: 8 hires on the listing this month when we checked

Less good:

• Weekly hours and project length are not stated
• Judgment-heavy work with no single right answer; expect calibration and pushback on your rationales
• Independent contractor; projects can be extended, shortened or ended early

About this listing

Posted by Mercor as a remote hourly contract, confirmed open on 24 September 2026. The rate, backgrounds and qualifications are the ad's own. See Mercor.