The Last Blog Post: Speak Loudly My #MRX Friends #LastBlog

The Last Blog Post is an idea set up by Daniel Burstein. His request: “If you had one last blog post to send out to the marketing world, what would you say?” There are already many posts available to read and you can follow them with the Twitter hashtag #LastBlog. Here is my post, albeit sent out to the marketing research world. ***

You have been blessed with the ability to understand research. It is a gift that gives you the ability to make the world a better place in your own unique way. Where some people see reams of numbers swirling in a haze of fear, you see t-test results and chi-square tables and regression equations that make perfect sense. You know how to interpret confidence intervals and sampling error and outliers to come to accurate and meaningful conclusions. You know how to design questionnaires that produce valid numbers and how to select samples that give generalizable results.

Use your gift for the common good. Speak loudly when statistics are being interpreted too strictly, too loosely, or just plain incorrectly. Speak loudly when surveys are too long, too boring, or poorly designed. Speak loudly when samples are selected with little care. Speak loudly when charts and illustrations are being used to entertain instead of educate. Speak loudly when you see our market research industry being wrongly trod upon.

Speak loudly my dear #MRX friends.