Issue link: https://nebusinessmedia.uberflip.com/i/482797
DOING WHAT WE TEACH & TEACHING WHAT WE DO SINCE 1981 www.RIVAinc.com (301) 770-6456 TRAINING INSTITUTE MARKET RESEARCH RIVA TRAINING INSTITUTE Moderator Training (Fundamentals - Advanced) Fundamentals of IDI Moderating Project Management and Screener Development Kid/Teen Research Ethnography Qualitative Toolbox Qualitative Analysis and Reporting Principles of Usability Testing Facilitation Webinars Master Moderator Certificate Program Coaching Custom Courses RIVA MARKET RESEARCH Full Service Qualitative Research Design Moderating Consulting Facilitating Age Differences So tell me. How old are you? Have you posted your age on any of your social media profiles? The answer for most people is, "None of your darn tootin' business!" As such, the sample sizes here are still great, but not Batman-great, just 30,000-foot view or so. And, for privacy and ethics reasons, data for people under the age of 13 were not included. (See chart on page 20). Based on the same categories we reviewed for gender, stereotypes again pan out. The younger genera- tion is more likely to use acronyms, slang, lax grammar, and strong lan- guage. Read the words, close your eyes, and you can almost picture in your mind what each (very) gener- alized person looks like. Conclusions The worst thing a researcher can do is generate conclusions about differences between men and women and how those should be reflected in a brand when those differences are purely related to demographics and not the brand itself. Concluding that there are gender or age differences when those differences are simply due to how men vs. women and younger vs. older people generally express themselves in the written word is a serious error that could have disas- trous results. Only a few select words were evaluated here, not enough to base a strong generalizable conclusion on, but the results are interesting. We can see that there are inherent differences between men and women, young and old. Now that we have some initial ideas about how these differences are expressed in the online social world, we can keep our eyes open for cases where these stereotypes no longer hold up. When who writes what differs greatly from these trends, you'll know you've got a real brand difference on your hands.