collecting thoughts...

Nice visualisation of school lunches around the world

Japan

Korea

France

Sweden

USA

Full post over on buzzfeed

Forrester report looks at what people care about keeping private online

Here’s a little snippet, see this article for more 

People are better at predicting other people’s behaviour than their own

In research, particularly qualitative research, we often make efforts to understand what that specific individual thinks.  If a participant starts to tell us what other people would do we often bring the participant back on course to find out what they would do to help ensure that we are really understanding them as individuals.

However, there seems to be 2 reasons that suggest deliberately asking participants what other people would do could actually be very beneficial!

Firstly - people are better at predicting other people’s behaviour than their own.  This interesting read over on the British Psychological Society Digest suggests that people are instinctually good social psychologists but at the same time poor self-psychologists.  When predicting our own behaviour we fail to take the influence of the situation into account (hence why researchers need to be careful not to assume that intentions turn into actual behaviour). By contrast, when predicting the behaviour of others, we correctly factor in the influence of the circumstances.  Psychologists in the above linked study found that students were better able to predict how other people would react in situations that involved helpful behaviour, charity donations and cheating compared with predictions on their own behaviour

Secondly - asking people what others would do can get you closer to understanding the perceived social norms.  Norms form an incredibly important part of the wider context in which behaviour occurs and therefore understanding how to change behaviour

So, maybe ask your participant what somebody else would do, you might discover something really interesting!

What triggers an Earworm - the song that’s stuck in your head?

image via flickr

This article over on BPS discusses ’earworm’ inducing exposure, with a survey showing the different ways that we come into contact with music in modern life, including: music in public places, in gyms, restaurants and shops; radio music; live music; ring tones; another person’s humming or singing; and music played in visual media on TV and on the Internet.  Ear worms are considered as ‘involuntary musical imagery’ or cognitive intrusions which are hard to control!  Had any ‘ear worms’ recently?

Kids care about environment as ‘nature is living’ more so than why important to humans - creative implications?

This article over on the BPS discusses a study in which children rated different types of transgressions and mundane decisions (moral, against the person, against others, bad manners and against the environment).  Transgressions against other people emerged as the worst of all, followed by harms against the environment, and then bad manners.  

“Asked to justify their judgments about environmental harm, 74 per cent of the explanations given referred to “biocentric” reasons (e.g. “A tree is a living thing and, it’s like, breaking off your arm - someone else’s arm or something”); 26 per cent invoked anthropocentric reasons (e.g. “Because without trees we wouldn’t have oxygen”). The ratio of these categories of explanation didn’t vary by age, but did vary by gender, with girls more likely to offer biocentric reasons. This fits with a wider, but still inconclusive, literature suggesting that women tend to base their moral judgments on issues of care, whereas men tend to base their moral judgments on issues of justice.”

more info over here

image via flickr

Excited that we’ve been shortlisted for the 2011 AQR award!

The finalist logo has come through, very exciting!  Really great news that our special constable research with the Met Police has been short listed for both the AQR and MRS awards this year, you can read more about the work in our Research Magazine case study over here.

Fingers crossed for the awards night on the 12th December.  I was involved in judging the MRS Research magazine awards and the entries were great - there is a lot of great research being done, so make sure you keep an eye out for the winners!

Have a read of our Met Police case study in this month’s Research Magazine!

We’ve been working with the Met Police to better understand what makes people give up their spare time to police London’s streets - for free. Learn more about our Real World Journey approach to recruiting special constables in the article below!

REsearch Magazine Article

REsearch Magazine Article 2

We’re excited that this work has been shortlisted for 2011 MRS awards, fingers crossed for December!

We’re shortlisted for the MRS advertising and media award!

Very excited to learn that we’ve been shortlisted for the Advertising and Media Research category in the 2011 MRS awards or our work with the Met Police!  I absolutely love doing research with the Met Police, in this particular project we were helping the Met Police to recruit special constables, so it really is the cherry on the cake that we are a finalist for the awards.

You can read more about the research in our article in this month’s Research Magazine (see here)  and find out how our insights helped lead to an unprecedented 61% increase in special constable applications and 65% decrease in cost per application! 

Fingers crossed for the awards ceremony in December!

Please drop me a line at claire.mcalpine@mediacom.com if you would like to find out more information (or for a natter).

What words do you find offensive?

Interesting report here from Ofcom on the language that people find offensive on TV and radio.  After watching a range of TV clips which included potentially offensive language, qualitative groups explored perceptions of these different words and the levels of offence associated with each word.  The report concludes that the following words are well known and generally seen to be socially acceptable: ‘nutter’, ‘looney’, ‘mental’, ‘lezza’, ‘poof’, ‘queer’, ‘jesus christ’.  

Personally, I still find some of these words to be very offensive and have seen them used in what I perceive to be derogatory ways on TV.  I was left wondering whether the mass considering something to be ‘socially acceptable’ is justification enough for it to be used in a TV program?  I hope not.  To be clear, I mean use of the words in a way that doesn’t challenge prejudices; so Jeremy Clarkson calling a car a ‘poof’s car’ sort of way.  I would have really liked to have seen in the paper a reflection on academic theories that consider the power of discourse in creating and sustaining prejudice and norms, such as Queer Theory and Social Constructionism.  Use of such words within mainstream media can actually influence perceptions of norm and social acceptability - it’s not just about language, it’s about reinforcing the views that are often embedded within such language.  And the negative impacts of such language can be much more insidious than a participant in a group discussion may be able to fully understand or express, particularly when you consider research findings around subtle racism (hidden rather than explicit racism) and benevolent sexism.

Still, I imagine it would have been a very intriguing set of groups to moderate.  You can read the full paper over here 

Cheers for the link @leemcewan.  (image via flickr)

How exciting - RWI are the lead article in Research Magazine! So, where do your good ideas come from?

We are very excited to see that RWI is lead article on the research-live.com website!  We wrote a piece about innovation in research and opened the debate about the origins of good research ideas.  The article channels the thoughts of Stephen Johnson and his book ‘Where good ideas come from: the natural history of innovation’ and we’re really pleased to hear from Research that the article has been well received with a huge amount of hits, RTs and interesting discussions in the comment section! 

The article discusses 5 key thoughts about the germination of good ideas:

• Be patient - ideas come from slow ‘hunches’
• Collect hunches ready to be stitched together at a later date
• Connect your hunches with the hunches of others
• Good ideas come from not just many but many diverse minds
• Make spaces for hunches to incubate

See the full article over here and please let us know your thoughts, after all, that’s how the best ones emerge!