One of the hardest stories a researcher has to tell is one that the client disagrees with. They have a vested interest and research is as much art as it is science so they can contest it. It is our job to acknowledge its limitations, defend its strengths and say what we can learn from it.

We’ve just conducted a robust poll of Brighton & Hove residents on political affiliation and attitudes to legal assistance to die (for the detail people out there, it was 1,000 representative quota sample on age, gender and working status based on 2001 census data, conducted by telephone by ICM Direct in accordance with MRS code of conduct).

The political affiliation question is interesting because Caroline Lucas of the Green party is in with a good chance of taking the Labour seat of Brighton Pavilion and becoming Britain’s first Green MP. An ICM poll commissioned by the Greens in December suggested that they were ahead of Labour and Tory. Past electoral results also add weight to this. In our independent poll in February however, we asked a different question which suggested that support for the Greens was lagging behind both Labour and Tory.

The outcry from Greens that followed its appearance in the local Argus newspaper for example here, here and here are typical shoot-the-messenger protests when it comes to research:

The sample size is too small - this is counter-intuitive to most people but the key criterion determing accuracy is how representative it is (ie how respondents have been selected) not how many interviews there are. 336 is a good number for a poll and the large difference between support for each of the parties cannot be explained by sampling variance.

There is nothing for us to learn here - there is always something to learn! The key question the Greens have to ask themselves is why do only 12% of Pavilion residents say they would vote for them in a general election tomorrow compared to 26% for Labour.

Twist or ignore the interpretation - I published the full report here and made clear in the interpretation the limitations of our raw findings and the conclusion that might be drawn.

Claim that other research is right so this research must be wrong - The main factor that explains the difference between the Green party poll and the Kindle poll is the question. The Green party question told respondents first that a general election was taking place and secondly the names of 4 of the parties who would be contesting. This practice lifts mentions of lesser known parties.

Cast suspicion on the motives - independent researchers do have allegiances but what we are primarily interested in is truth and learning. Some clients may want to put a spin on research findings to serve their own interests but when they spend money they want to find out what is going on so they can invest wisely.

Lack of experience - the sample is sound, the method is sound and the questions follow standard practice.

Seems to me that rules and standards about social media etiquette are still emerging and, characteristic of the medium, they are being negotiated by the people who are using social media. The novelty of the medium, its interconnectedness and its ability to transmit a message across very wide audiences means that there is an ongoing debate about how it should be used and how users should behave.

However, there also seems to be a consensus emerging around etiquette, which unsurprisingly would serve us well in our personal relationships. There’s quite a bit of chat about it but here are my seven:

1. Be giving – respect needs to be earned by referencing and helping others
2. Be patient – respect and influence will come but this needs to be built gradually
3. Listen – it’s easy to misinterpret what others are saying so take time to hear what they are saying
4. Say something interesting – of course (!) but the key to influence is to say things that others will be interested in
5. Be authentic – if it isn’t real you’ll get found out
6. Relinquish control – you’re a participant in a sea of opinion you cannot hope to control
7. Be nice and friendly – this really is the crux of it and this attitude will serve you well

Let me know what you think!

Some really interesting developments in online buzz today.

On this morning’s commute, someone witnessed and videoed a rather nasty encounter between an elderly gent and a London Underground employee with issues called Ian. So he blogged about it, loaded up the video and told everyone he knew about it. Then they told everyone they knew about it. In no time at all, it was in the national press, the Mayor of London made a statement and poor Ian’s facebook page was made public.

I feel a little uneasy about the mob baying for Ian’s blood. First, there’s a process for dealing with employees that needs to be followed right? And see again how people find it really easy to take action and express their indignation online; yet, when you watch the video, this was a packed station, with lots of people and they just watched this idiot abusing the elderly gent. They didn’t DO anything.

But this feels great. One person saw something so wrong that he video’d it, loaded it up to his blog and that afternoon thousands of people are talking about it. It’s like…democracy.

Today JISC has launched a video documentary about the future of libraries. It’s really about academic libraries in universities rather than the libraries on our high streets but many of the issues are the relevant to all libraries.

This is a critically important issue. Although they are easy to laugh off, libraries play a fundamental role in our democratic foundations, providing fair and open access to information so we can all make informed choices and build our knowledge. They are a social hub for the community and build social capital.

Librarians play a key role in helping us to access the right sort of information and making these centres welcoming places. More and more people are turning to the internet, typically via Google, and finding their answers there but information literacy can be poor particularly among the younger generations.

Having interviewed many, many librarians about their future I worry. They are presented with an enormous opportunity to help people discriminate and identify great information but they have huge challenges. They see their users less as many access the library remotely but now more than ever they have to sell their expertise. They have to love new technology but they tend to be rather conservative and hanker for the way things were. The job is seen as dull and unexciting - and it isn’t!.

In universities I see the brightest future in converting the library space into a social space. They have to build great online spaces so the information can be accessed from anywhere, at any time. They need to match that with great physical spaces where people can come together to talk, exchange, work, explore.

And these two spaces need to be bridged with social media - a space where people can be drawn into the libraries and where the conversations can continue.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrapheap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I’ve been playing with Twitter a bit more. This short video explains what it is in plain English if you don’t know how it works or why people are using it. The video talks about updating friends, family and co-workers on the minutiae of your life but I’m more interested to see how it works as a business tool.

People are piling into it even if it has slowed up in the last month. Pretty impressive for a company with less than 50 staff.  There are lots of market researchers and other interesting people on there but what kind of people are they?  Currently usage is dominated by a few people - 90% of tweets come just 10% of users and half of Twitter users have only tweeted once.

It’s people who feel they have something to say. But rather than telling their followers what they are doing, they are sharing what they are thinking and finding. So if you have the time, and you could spend a lot of time on it, it’s a fascinating way to connect and learn.

One of the most interesting questions is how Twitter is going to make money. Here is one of the founders talking about it - they still seem awfully vague.

Follow me: @kindleresearch

Always looking for inspiration and happy to take a moment’s respite from daily tasks Kindle Research decided to attend Futurelab’s Beyond Current Horizons Conference, ‘ Looking at the future of education beyond 2025’.   (One couldn’t help but notice their direct alignment with the DCSF by branding the enterprise ‘technology, children, schools and family’…)

A rather conceptual but fascinating day followed as Futurelab outlined 5 potential challenges facing education in the context of social and technological change.   It would be a disservice to attempt an overview of the day as the scope of themes was vast, incorporating presentations about the…
•    impact of technology on identity and communities
•    blurring distinctions  between the public/private and work/leisure
•    incalculable growth in the depth, scale and use of data on every level
•    the outsourcing of intelligence, decision-making and responsibilities to machines
•    and that every age will have to deal with social and generational gaps in terms of access use and comprehension of technology

Whilst each of these themes are fascinating but somewhat well-trodden of most interest was the futurist’s typical practice of challenging the audience to envisage designing educational practice for different scenarios informed by their 5 challneges above.  Perhaps the most optimistic of the scenarios given was one of networked individuals, where access to the network is pervasive and provides some kind of cognitive enhancement… you could call it a communal approach.  Conversely we were also asked to consider how one might attempt to help learners navigate complex learning environments in a different sort of post-industrialised model of the education environment.  A context where commercial learning providers compete, and there is a real blurring of the distinctions between formal and informal learning… a more individualistic vision of the future.

In these times of educational and economic uncertainty it may seem something of a luxury to engage in utopian/dystopian fantasies but they really are worth considering if only for the fact they quickly polarise opinions and reveal something of our immediate values and anxieties.  And it is this insight that informs my main criticism of the day; the failure to ask what the implications of these future scenarios are for education and the decisions we need to make about the use of technology today.

Schools and teachers are under continually increasing pressure and for many these are anxious times as they are asked to perform more varied tasks, manage more change in terms of policy and practice  (let alone technology…  and please, please don’t mention an imminent election)  whilst enduring ever-increasing scrutiny and it felt remiss to evade an opportunity to reflect on the many crunchy issues facing us now as they make decisions which will affect the future.     But … looking to the future… Futurelab are developing some materials which they plan to release later this month which we look forward to.

Not a great start for the heavily trailed Wolfram Alpha. While the semantic search knowledgebase may well improve with time, the rather fun comments on the bottom of the article offer enlightening user feedback about its current performance. It’s rubbish! Though I asked it for the meaning of life and it did come back with the literarily correct 42, it might be a while before it can provide good answers to tricky (and not so tricky) questions.

How interesting that a “thing” is heralded as the most revolutionary development in books for half a century. What about the Google Book Project, Amazon, ebooks? A machine in a London bookstore has over 500,000 titles that it will print on demand, in about 5 minutes and reports suggest the quality is good.

Personally, I think these are a fantastic innovation and I fully expect them to be a more common sight. I still believe readers of books want to touch and feel paper and lots will never want to either buy more electronic kit or settle down with a tablet device. If the quality is good, it only takes a few minutes and the price is the same, they will buy it from a machine.

Maybe it is part of the marketing hype but in an era when we have witnessed one electronic-based revolution after another, people find it easier to relate to things.

The Kindle e-book reader is gathering advocates and I might have to start changing my mind about its success as a device for reading novels. Here is a very thorough article on the impact it may have on our relationship with books.

It’s interesting to see there is also a review on the same page comparing it with the Sony e-book reader which doesn’t have the same capability as the Kindle to download books wirelessly. That is clearly helping impulse purchases of books and gives it the edge over the Sony. I still think it looks ugly though.

Another impact of its success is the additional traffic to the Kindle Research website (we were here before the Kindle Reader). I think we will have to do some research on it to satisfy all those people who come expecting to see a review.