#MRX MRA IMRO SMR Guidelines #8: Citing References

January 5, 2011 | Comments Off

MRA recently released version 1 of the MRA/IMRO Guide to the Top 16 Social Media Research Questions, a tool to help newcomers and vendors communicate with each other about this new datasource and method. Conversition was a key contributor to this document which is now available on the MRA website.
.
This blog is #8 in a series of 16, each one addressing Conversition’s viewpoint on one of the items in the guidelines. We welcome your questions and comments, and look forward to further discussions on this exciting new trend in the market research industry.

kevin_p from morguefile

How are sources cited in research reports and on research Web portals? Are the citations different based on the source, e.g., Twitter, Blogger, forums?

Marketing research is not the same as academic research that takes place in a library. Though it is possible to gather social media data and specifically identify the website link, and even the individual person creating the information, that doesn’t mean it’s appropriate to do so. Social media data is research data that should be treated as similarly as possible to other forms of research data.

In surveys and focus groups, we promise participants that we will not share their names or other personally identifiable information with clients. We never include email addresses, phone numbers, or personal data in client reports. This is probably why people share so many intimate details with us – they didn’t write their name on the survey and their name won’t be in the research report.

However, the mere process of collecting social media data means that individuals are identifiable. Their name is usually right beside their research contribution. Sometimes, their age, gender, and address are right beside their contribution as well. But, as always, just because we have it doesn’t mean we should share it in reports.

It is common practice to provide links in social media portals. This allows researchers to click through the link and read comments in context. It ensures that opinions can be fully understood before they are aggregated into a representative research result.  It is a method for validating the finding and the accuracy of the end result. The purpose of market research is not to respond to individual people nor even to evaluate individual people. The purpose of market research is to aggregate data to achieve a broad understanding of a community. As such, there is no need to include personally identifying information in the next stage of the research process, the research report.

Research reports should not include personally identifiable information such as links or names. But, it is entirely appropriate for reports to indicate that “15% of results were sourced from Twitter” or that “86% of Foursquare users are extremely satisfied with the brand whereas only 26% of Blogger users are extremely satisfied.”  But to go one step further and name names just isn’t in keeping with the spirit of market research.

There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. Chances are that public figures expect their opinions to be shared in an identifiable way. Massively popular blogs like Mashable and Techcrunch expect people to directly quote and link to them. Politicians like Obama and Stephen Harper expect to be directly quoted. (I bet you’re wondering who Stephen Harper is.) And, even yours truly expects that people will quote this blog directly.

Exceptions to the rule do not make the rule. If you do not know, without a doubt, that the person would expect their comments to be quoted, then adhere to the rule of privacy. No citations in reports.

.
.
Related links

MRA IMRO Guide #1: Advantages and Disadvantages of SMR
MRA IMRO Guide #2: Datasources of SMR
MRA IMRO Guide #3: Data Fusion and SMR
MRA IMRO Guide #4: Reliability of SMR
MRA IMRO Guide #5: Responsibilities of Social Media Data Users

We're sorry, but comments are closed.

No Responses to  “#MRX MRA IMRO SMR Guidelines #8: Citing References”