The N-of-1

Robert Wilcox / Unsplash

We still sometimes get questions from quant-oriented clients about what seem like small sample sizes in our qualitative research. This article describes a relatively new trend in medical research, the N-of-1 trial – or a study of just one person.

These studies are gaining momentum in research on pain, nutrition, and psychology. Many are considered gold standard forms of research.

N-of-1 studies gain their power from collecting many data points from a small number of individuals over a period of time, rather than gathering a few data points from a much larger subset of people. These designs can be especially helpful in medicine when studying rare diseases, where working with large sample sizes is impractical.

In a way, this mirrors what we do in our ZMET research. Rather than skimming the surface with massive numbers of people, we go very deep (essentially getting many more “data points”) with people one-on-one, and then combine those individual N-of-1 studies to reveal a picture of the mind of the market.