by Lynn Welsh, IMRO President

Did you know that IMRO is the fastest growing division of the MRA? Our membership numbers have increased more than five fold in the past three years alone. This impressive growth trend is a testament to the proliferation of online research in our industry, but also to, I’d like to think, the continuing efforts of our leadership and volunteers in creating a valuable service to the industry. As far as we have come in the past few years, we know there is much more to accomplish. Staying abreast of the changing landscape of online research requires considerable time and effort, as does continuing to meet the demands of our growing membership.

We are taking steps internally at our leadership level to ensure that we are structured the best way possible to meet the needs of our increasing membership. Part of this process has involved taking a look at our leadership structure and improving upon it. Historically, IMRO has been led by a Board of Governors consisting of a President, and the five Vice Presidents leading various committees: Communications, Government Affairs, Professional Standards, Education, and Conferences and Events. In the coming months, we will explore whether this system still best serves our organization, or if there are ways that we can redefine or restructure to be more efficient.

One of the exciting new initiatives that we are proud to announce is the impending revitalization and re-launch of our interactive Journal of Online Research, or iJOR. In the past, this tool has been a repository for peer reviewed, white papers or abstracts on interactive research topics. Steve August of KDA Research is spearheading our efforts to re-launch the iJOR in this capacity, but also to expand upon the journal concept to include an online discussion or knowledge sharing element. This may include discussion topics and forums, interviews with thought leaders in the industry, and bulletin board messaging.

If you have not done so already, please take a look at our recently published “Best Practices Guidelines for Online Research and Panel Management”. The goal of this comprehensive publication is two-fold: to set a much-needed standard for online research with respect to online sample, and to provide a tool for researchers to ensure their research is being conducted in an ethical way that will meet client needs. This document is available to view and download at www.imro.org.

As always, we welcome the participation and involvement of new volunteers. Each of us makes important contribution to the online research industry, and any organization is bolstered by the active participation and combined knowledge of its members. Please reach out to either me or Janet Savoie (janet.savoie@onlinesurveysolution.com), our Communications VP, if you would like to become more involved.

Enjoy the newsletter,
Lynn Welsh

by Janet Savoie VP Communications, IMRO

In the spirit of the MRA’s 50th anniversary celebration, I asked Joyce Rachelson, VP, Director of Product Sales at CFMC, to reminisce about her 40 years in the marketing research industry. Joyce is amazing. She has been a member of MRA since 1984 and is someone who is always there when you need an MRA volunteer. She attends all of the National and most of the Chapter conferences, generously gives her time, and never fails to sponsor the event. Here’s her walk down memory lane about how it was and how online research has changed her world and the industry.

Q: How many years have you been in the industry?

JR: Its an eye opener for me every time I realize that I got my first exposure to the industry in 1965. I worked as a coder between terms in college. I got my first, full-time Marketing Research position in 1967.

Q: What was your first job?

JR: My first MR job was at a small, full service firm in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I did coding, hand tabs, mimeographing of paper questionnaires, collating. I even got the chance to learn interviewing and supervisory skills. Later on, I developed a focus group panel of new mothers. We were so small, I had to baby sit some of the kids while the moms were in the group.

Q: Describe what life in marketing research was like back then.

JR: Its funny, but in some ways, the mentality of the industry hasn’t changed much. ‘I want it yesterday’ always seems to be the motivating factor. It’s the way that we get and process the information that has changed.

Typing and retyping mimeograph sheets (corrections weren’t easy on that stuff), printing, collating, all of it was very time consuming. Interviewing then either hand tabbing or keypunching and using a counter sorter to compile the information and using a huge machine to get percentages then preparing the final reports. The entire process could take up to two months. First big change was the hand held calculator. Made the tabbing process go a whole lot faster.

I remember when I got my first computer processing position in 1970. I was so impressed with the speed of processing my data. That lasted about 2 weeks. Then I asked if we could make it faster. Every time we upgraded machines the process got faster but it was never fast enough.

Q: How has the internet changed your world?

JR: Wow! The age of instant information and gratification. Now we can create and administer a questionnaire in a few hours. Send out invitations via e-mail and have the tabbing done in just a few hours or days, depending on the schedule of invitations.

The data can be delivered to the client faster than they can analyze it, but, you still hear the same demands, ‘I want it faster, better, cheaper.’ Some things never change.

Q: What problems and benefits do you see from doing research online?

JR: Let’s start with the benefits. Information can now be gathered and processed at speeds we could only dream about in 1967.

Questionnaires can be much more complex with computerization. Gone are the days of fold out sheets where interviewers wrote down information that they had to refer to later in the survey.

The data is cleaner because of the programming. You don’t have to rely on the human mind to remember to follow skip patterns or what previous responses were given.

You have a wider base of respondents because you can interview world wide in a short period of time. The internet has made it easier to locate the hard to find respondents because of the proliferation of on-line sample and ways to build those panels.

Now for what I see are some problems. We still can’t be sure who we’re interviewing with an on-line survey. Everyone who has a computer and internet access has more than one e-mail address and can create different personas to meet the needs of the surveys.

We’re over using our respondent base and burning them out by constantly bombarding them with requests to do interviews.

The industry is responsible for creating too many ‘professional respondents’ who hope to gain monetarily by doing as many surveys as they can.

Sometimes we are guilty of spamming to meet quotas. I used to belong to several on line panels. I dropped out when I would get requests for surveys that just shouldn’t have been sent out. One was on heavy duty gardening equipment. I live in Manhattan in a 14th floor apartment. I don’t even have a balcony let alone a plant. I should have been screened out by my zip code or area code which I had given to the panel company when I first signed on. There is just no excuse for that.

Q: Any predictions for the future?

JR: My crystal ball is a little cloudy but I think the future may have some real surprises for us. I know the industry is already working on ways to better screen potential respondents and slow down the proliferation of professional respondents. I hope that we’ll become more discerning in the surveys that we put out there so that we don’t burn out the respondent base.

Technology wise, there are no boundaries. Hardware is getting smaller and someday, in the near future, we’ll all have that Dick Tracy two way wrist radio with full computer capabilities.

Voice recognition software has come a long way and it will revolutionize the data collection process.

We’ll find newer and better ways to protect our most important asset, the respondents. I see a great future for our industry and I’m happy to be a part of it.