Dump the Hot Trends for These 7 Workshops
If you are a market research professional, I urge you to look for continuing education beyond the MR industry groups such as the Insights Association, Quirk’s, etc. and instead look to a more academic organization like AAPOR, the American Association for Public Opinion Research.
Yes, their conferences will be the most boring you ever attend. (Ever been to an academic conference?) And their positions on issues facing the industry are painfully slow to evolve. (It took the organization years to accept the idea that online polling can work.)
But there is substance and depth to everything that AAPOR does. No hot trends or fading fads. Just enduring, substantive issues that are the core of what we do in market research.
The 2017 annual conference coming up in May includes a new feature: half-day workshops taught by leading experts in research methods. The seven workshops being offered are:
Course 1. Dashboards for Active Survey Monitoring
Course 2. Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) Measurement in Surveys: History and Best Practices from Kinsey to CHIS and NHIS
Course 3. Mixed-Mode Surveys: An Overview of Estimation and Adjustment Methods and Empirical Applications
Course 4. An Introduction to Practical Text Analytics for Qualitative Research
Course 5. Visual Design for Single- and Mixed-Mode Surveys
Course 6. Into the Stream: An Introduction to Big Data Access for Survey Researchers and Social Scientists
Course 7. Designing Surveys to Combat Declining Response Rates and Increasing Data Collection Costs
I don’t know about you, but all of these are deeply relevant to the clients we work with at Versta Research. They are being taught by serious and sober researchers who are staying on top of trends in our industry, but who are separating out the substance from the hype.
This is an opportunity to learn something at your next conference beyond just hearing about all the latest and greatest.