Issue link: https://nebusinessmedia.uberflip.com/i/482797
Q U A L I TAT I V E R E S E A R C H C O N S U LTA N T S A S S O C I AT I O N 19 monly used words in each category and, using five datasets ranging from 500,000 to 1.5 million verbatims, took a deep dive into "who writes what" in social media. Gender Differences Gender is always a lovely demographic to work with in social media because it is the one that people are most inclined to share. As such, the sample sizes are sufficient to be confident that any differences found are true demographic differences as opposed to random error. (See chart above) In addition, the sample sizes are so large that it makes little sense to conduct statis- tical tests (yay!), as every single test would be significant. Our intuition and common sense will determine which differences are meaningful differences and which ones we would act upon if we were making a rec- ommendation to a client. Family: Out of every 100 verbatims, women mentioned kids 13 times, whereas men mentioned kids nine times. In other words, it's not sufficient to notice that women in an online focus group mention kids more often than men. We must deter- mine whether they mention kids twice as often or more. Otherwise, it's just women being women. Women also talk about other family members, including moms, dads, sisters, and brothers, more often than do men. The only group that men talk about more than women do is other men. So, when men start hogging the conversation, and it's not about men, we know something interesting is going on. References: Out of every 100 ver- batims, women mentioned "my" 46 times, while men mentioned "my" 32 times. As a group, women are more likely to refer to themselves and other women. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to refer to other people in the form of you, your, or he. As such, when men start to mention themselves more often or women start mentioning other people more often, then you know you've registered a real differ- ence between men and women's percep- tions of a brand and not just inherent gen- der differences. Positivity: Stereotypes once again prevail. Men are more likely to choose aggressive words like fight, argue, and moron, while women are more likely to choose positive words like awesome, love, help, and amaz- ing. To take this even further, men are far more likely to write out The Big Swear Words while women choose milder words like dang and darn (me too!). If you see women using more harsh profanity than men, you know you've got a real brand issue, not simply an inherent gender skew. Grammar: When it comes to grammar, men and women are more similar to each other. However, though men have a slight edge in terms of perfect grammar (a lot, man who), they are much lazier when it comes to using apostrophes. When you see women taking more grammatical chances than men, you might have a case of brand differences, rather than inherent gender differences. Family kids, mom, dad, sister, brother, woman man References myself, our, we, she, her, me, I, my, herself you, your, his, himself Positivity fab, crying, funny, crazy, fun, beautiful, amazing, hate, help, awesome, love fight, argue, idiot, win, moron Profanity darn, dang f***, s***, damn, ass, n***a, bitch, hoes Grammar woman that, would of a lot, man who, don't, won't, didn't, they're, you're, isn't, can't, haven't, aren't Acronyms LOL, OMG, LMAO, BF, SMH, WTF BTW Slang C, luv, r, ppl, haha dat, u, gotta, bout, gonna Research Variables volunteer, on sale, donate, deals, cheap, price, credit card, taxes, purchase, bought, wait, try different, recommend, vote Category WOMEN MEN "Women like to shorten their messages, and they do so in a way that maintains a certain degree of grammatical correctness." Gender Differences