The annual Joint Chapter Conference with Great Lakes, Atlanta Southeast, and Florida chapters of the MRA was held February 3-4 in Clearwater Beach, Florida, and by all accounts, a tremendous success.  The variety of content provided and the number of different PRC credits made available make this conference hard to beat.  View all conference presentations.
 
The conference began with a strong presentation from Marta Bethart of Bethart Bilingual Research about the myths that exist with Hispanic research. Following Marta's strong start to the day was Maria Henson from Sea World Parks and Entertainment, who provided her perspective on the effectiveness and application of various online qualitative research tools. It's always valuable to have a client-side perspective on the tools we use every day.
 
Following an outside lunch in slightly cooler than expected temperatures, we re-started the conference with Benton Smith of Burke who presented a case study for international project management. His presentation provided the audience with some valuable lessons to executing a large international research project. Dr. Joanne Leoni of Johnson and Wales University was up next with a very entertaining look at the differences that exist between older and younger generations, and its implications in the workplace.
 
Our final presentation of the afternoon was from Dr. Jeanette Saquet of the Business Research Group. Dr. Saquet presented on the legal implications of HIPAA and its relevance to researchers. Her presentation provided some very good information on a topic we sometimes are too eager to overlook.  We wrapped up the first day with a networking event at the Clearwater Aquarium that included a personal dolphin show! It was a nice end to a great day of presentations.

If you attended the Great Lakes/Florida/Atlanta Southeast Joint Chapter conference in Clearwater this month, you heard some outstanding speakers.  Two of the topics made me think a bit deeper: Marta Bethart provided insightful information about researching the U.S. Hispanic Market while Benton Smith explored the complexity and breadth of a large, global study.  Global research and multicultural domestic research are very relevant topics; you really can't be a good researcher today if you don't understand the basics well enough to at least ask the right questions.   What is your global perspective?  As a North American, do you know how the English language and populations of the U.S. and Canada stack up?

The U.S., with a population of just under three hundred and ten million represents only 5 percent of the world's people (4.5 percent to be more precise). Canada's thirty four million represent one half of one percent.  The populations of China and India each are over a billion.  Looking at the world this way, it's easy to see why companies want to conduct research across the globe.

 

But what language do you need to use when you get there?  Mandarin Chinese is the most common language while English is the fourth most common language. There are about three hundred and forty million native English speakers.  Both Hindi and Spanish are the first language for more people than English.