Walkowski, Jeff

Jeff Walkowski is the principal of QualCore.com Inc., a consulting firm providing traditional and online qualitative research services to a wide range of industries including health care, financial services, automotive, and information services. He was schooled as a quantitative specialist and entered the industry in the 1980s as a statistician. He later discovered his talents as a moderator and evolved into a qualitative specialist by the mid-1990s.

Jeff’s specialty is online qualitative. He has conducted more than 1,000 online sessions (real-time text chats, video chats and multi-day discussion boards); he has spoken about online qualitative at conferences in North America, Europe, and Asia; and he has published articles on the subject. Jeff co-chaired the Online Qualitative Research Task Force of the Qualitative Research Consultants Association, co-edited Qualitative Research Online (Research Publishers LLC, 2004), and in 2002 co-founded the Online Moderator Training Institute to help traditional moderators adapt their skills to the online world (www.OnlineModerator.com).

Jeff thrives on variety and has mastered most qualitative approaches. Thus, he is equally adept at conducting research in person, by phone, or over the Internet. He enjoys conducting in-depth interviews, mini- groups, and focus groups. His practice includes a healthy mix of consumer and business-to-business projects. He has interviewed a wide range of people, from grade-schoolers to senior citizens, stay-at-home moms to company presidents, truck drivers to engineers, and new parents to physicians.

He has international experience was well, having provided on-site supervision of qualitative research projects in London, Paris, Rome, Milan, Hamburg, Moscow, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangkok, Shanghai, Beijing, and Tokyo.

Jeff holds an MBA from Southern Methodist University, an MS (Educational Research) and a BA (Psychology) from Southern Connecticut State University, and has been a faculty member of the RIVA Training Institute since 2000. In addition, he authored the qualitative marketing research course for the University of Georgia’s and MRII’s Principles of Marketing Research online certificate program, which launched in 2019.

Jeff served on the Board of Directors of the Qualitative Research Consultants Association (QRCA) from 2002-2006 and served two terms as President of that international organization. In addition to being actively involved in the QRCA, he is also a member of the Insights Association.

Jeff is an active volunteer. Since 1997 he has been a volunteer cook for Clare Housing—a Minnesota non-profit that provides housing for those with HIV/AIDS. He is an interviewer for the Red River Rainbow Seniors Oral History Project based in Fargo, North Dakota. He has been a juror for the Fargo Film Festival since 2011. He also leads his Minneapolis neighborhood’s “Welcome Wagon” program.

Contact Information

Phone: 612-377-3439

e-mail: Jeff.Walkowski@QualCore.com