FSU grad takes on Western bias with 'Besample,' a Tallahassee research firm

Florida State University doctoral student Elena Brandt has always been shocked at the behavioral science research she sees being conducted by American scientists because of the lack of diversity among participants in international surveys and experiments.

She decided to do something about it by becoming the founder and chief executive officer of Besample, a unique, Tallahassee-based research firm that gives researchers quick and cost-efficient access to diverse research respondents in 42 different countries around the world — including Brazil, Kenya, Colombia and Bangladesh.

“I’m an immigrant,” Brandt, who is from Moscow, Russia, told the Tallahassee Democrat. “I know that there are countries that are very different when it comes to things like health insurance, economic decisions, psychology and mentality.”

“But there’s a lot of top research based on what feels like the false assumption that the rest of the world functions the same way that the U.S. does,” she added.

Brandt, a 36-year-old mother of three, moved to the U.S. six years ago and is currently pursuing her doctoral degree in social psychology at FSU after earning her master's degree in social psychology from the university in 2021 and her bachelor's degree in psychology and foreign languages from Moscow State Linguistic University in Russia in 2008.

She officially launched the online platform Besample in February with the help of co-founder and chief operating officer Tamila Feldman, who moved to the U.S. from Saint Petersburg, Russia, about three years ago after earning her master's degree in technological innovations management from ITMO (Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics) University in Russia.

Through the startup, researchers in social science and behavior science fields such as psychology, economics and sociology have the opportunity to expand their research audiences.

“I see how impressed our users are about being able to use a platform that can connect them to respondents around the world,” said Feldman, 34, “and to have this social impact is very inspiring.”

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The main issue that led to Besample is how the majority of social science and psychology research examines people from WEIRD — Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic — populations, according to a 2010 study by Harvard University Professor Joseph Henrich.

“Besample confronts the WEIRD bias head-on and gives a voice to previously unheard corners of the world,” Feldman said.

But what prevents researchers from recruiting individuals from non-Western countries for their research are the difficulty and costliness — two problems that Besample aims to resolve.

“If researchers want to go cross-cultural and need to find a collaborator in Kenya, for example, they either need to know someone there or else it'll be unfeasible,” Brandt said. “A second option is turning to traditional research panel agencies, but they are extremely expensive. I got a quote once for my own research, and it was like $12,000.”

While the traditional route can cost thousands to tens of thousands of dollars, Besample can run the same studies with participants for hundreds of dollars.

For example, surveying 300 participants in Brazil can cost as low as $150, which is due in part to the direct contact Besample has with participants.

Besample has a dozen team members that include representatives around the world in countries such as Israel, Ukraine, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Syria.

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In addition, Brandt says many of the countries that Besample works with have low average incomes, and the money that participants get paid for being a part of the research surveys and experiments makes a significant difference to them.

“In some of these places, earning $5 a day by participating in a survey is a lot,” she said.

Costs for researchers are determined by the number of respondents they hope to have participating from a country, the minimum wage of the country, the timing of the surveys or experiments and currency rates.

So far, the firm has worked with individual researchers from 35 different universities, including FSU, Yale University, Stanford University and the University of California, Los Angeles.

“Previous solutions would take a year to deliver a fairly small sample of data from a non-Western country,” former FSU Assistant Professor Paul Conway, who currently teaches at the University of Southampton in England, said in a prepared statement. “With Besample, I was able to get a large scale South American sample at a moment’s notice for a modicum of cost.”

“Now, accessing participants outside the typical bubbles can happen in days or weeks rather than a year,” he added. “That is a tremendous step forward.”

Although Besample has not had any Florida A&M University researchers participate yet, it has plans of spreading the word out to them, according to Brandt.

With the startup only having been established for the past four months, feedback is being collected to improve the research firm as it continues to grow.

Contact Tarah Jean at tjean@tallahassee.com or follow her on twitter @tarahjean_.

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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: FSU graduate starts Besample firm for diverse global research