What’s In the Toolbox?

A Focus on
Drivers Analysis

What's the Story?

At dQ&A, our job is to answer our clients’ most important business questions. We pride ourselves not only on our understanding of diabetes, but our mastery of a breadth of Quantitative Research techniques.

Drivers Analysis is a sophisticated statistical technique that delivers penetrating, next-level insights by disentangling the underlying causes of specific outcomes – so you learn not only ’what’ but ‘why’.

Its ‘superpower’ is to explain satisfaction with a product or service in terms of its component attributes. It can determine what are the most important or desirable features. Our clients love it!

“Drivers Analysis quantifies how specific items contribute to an overall outcome—for example, product satisfaction. This statistical approach allows us to identify what’s actually influencing people’s experiences.”

Applications of Drivers Analysis

dQ&A uses Drivers Analysis in our Custom Quantitative Research projects, or in an exclusive Drivers Analysis Data Service we offer to our clients. Here are some of the applications we’ve discovered:  

Use Case
Value
Usecase
Identify which product features most influence satisfaction:
Value
Helps teams prioritize development based on what matters most to users.
Usecase
Align messaging with what actually drives satisfaction:
Value
Ensures communication highlights the features users truly value.
Usecase
Understand how priorities shift across therapy types and patient populations:
Value
Reveals which drivers matter most to different user groups—such as those using insulin pumps vs. multiple daily injections.
Usecase
Evaluate how competitors are performing on what users care about most:
Value
Goes beyond score comparisons to highlight where competitors are winning (or losing) on attributes that truly impact satisfaction.
“For Drivers Analysis, we use relative importance regression—a statistically rigorous method that estimates how much each factor contributes to outcomes like satisfaction, even when the factors are correlated. This helps avoid overstating the impact of any one item and provides a more reliable view of what truly matters.”
Dr. Trevor Bell
dQ&A Director of Research

Example – Diabetes Devices

  • dQ&A uses Drivers Analysis to unpack patient perceptions of AID and CGM.
  • We analyze AID and CGM products from all leading brands, across the USA and EU markets (incorporating thousands of user responses).
  • We can deliver a detailed understanding of how each product attribute contributes to overall satisfaction and highlight opportunities for product improvement.
  • Drivers Analysis makes the differences between competitive products crystal clear, delivers a deeper understanding of how patients think, and imparts insights for commercial strategy and segmentation.

Relative Importance

In this (disguised) example, we used Drivers Analysis to determine the Relative Importance to patients of AID system attributes for two pump/CGM combinations from leading brands. Not only can we measure "importance", but we can map this against satisfaction to determine the most valuable opportunities for improvement or competitive positioning.

Continue the Conversation

Contact us to further discuss how Drivers Analysis might help you. If you have questions about strategy, competitive intelligence, product R&D, marketing or market research in general - then dQ&A Drivers Analysis can deliver clarity. 

Contact Us

Do You Have Questions
About Diabetes Research?

We Have Answers.

This research excerpt is just the tip of the iceberg. dQ&A has decades of experience across the United States, Canada, and Europe. If you drive critical diabetes research decisions in your organization, dQ&A is the diabetes insight partner that can get the answers you need.

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