Will AI replace Survey Researchers?

Many of your tasks are within reach of AI. The role will change, so it pays to act now.

Task exposure to today's AI

60/100

High exposure

This is the occupation's typical task mix. Your own score can be up to 30 points higher or lower depending on how you work: routine share, people contact, judgment and how much you already use AI.

Get your personal score

Will AI replace Survey Researchers?

Not entirely. Today's AI tools can take on about 60% of the typical work in this occupation, mostly: prepare and present summaries and analyses of survey data, including tables, graphs, and fact sheets that describe survey techniques and results. The parts that stay human include: Direct and review the work of staff members, including survey support staff and interviewers who gather survey data.; Analyze data from surveys, old records, or case studies, using statistical software.; Determine and specify details of survey projects, including sources of information, procedures to be used, and the design of survey instruments and materials..

People who learn to use AI for the automatable parts keep the edge. The 3-phase plan below shows where to start.

Which tasks AI can take on

The largest tasks in this occupation, their share of the working week, and how much of each today's AI tools can do.

TaskAutomatable

Prepare and present summaries and analyses of survey data, including tables, graphs, and fact sheets that describe survey techniques and results.AI already used 78%

Review, classify, and record survey data in preparation for computer analysis.AI already used 78%

Produce documentation of the questionnaire development process, data collection methods, sampling designs, and decisions related to sample statistical weighting. 78%

Determine and specify details of survey projects, including sources of information, procedures to be used, and the design of survey instruments and materials. 62%

Analyze data from surveys, old records, or case studies, using statistical software.AI already used 60%

Support, plan, and coordinate operations for single or multiple surveys. 55%

+ 10 more tasks (46% of the week) in the full test.

Your human edge

Direct and review the work of staff members, including survey support staff and interviewers who gather survey data.
Analyze data from surveys, old records, or case studies, using statistical software.
Determine and specify details of survey projects, including sources of information, procedures to be used, and the design of survey instruments and materials.

AI tools to try

ChatGPT / Claude for literature and writingAI research tools (e.g. Elicit, Consensus, Semantic Scholar)Copilot for data analysis code (Python, R)

Related roles

A 3-phase AI learning plan

Phase 1

Faster literature and writing

Literature search and summaries with AI, always checked against the papers.
Drafts of methods, reports and grant text.
Reference management and formatting.

Project

Use AI to draft the methods section and literature review for one upcoming survey, verifying every cited paper against the original, and log hours saved versus your last questionnaire report.

Phase 2

AI for data analysis

Analysis code in Python or R written with AI help.
Visualisation and statistics explained step by step.
Reproducibility: version code and prompts.

Project

Rebuild one past survey's weighting and crosstab analysis as AI-written R or Python scripts in a version-controlled repo with saved prompts, and confirm the numbers match the original tables.

Phase 3

AI as a research method

Classification, extraction or modelling with AI on your data.
Validate against human labels or ground truth.
Ethics, data protection and disclosure of AI use.

Project

Use an AI model to code 500 open-ended survey responses into your existing categories, measure agreement against your own hand-coded labels, and write a short AI-use and data-protection disclosure.

Take the free 11-question test