infOpinions?

The Edelman/Technorati Blog Study has concluded and the results are out.

They obtained 821 responses. A good pool. However, I don’t find much about the methodology and can only conjecture as to how they’ve done it based upon some other posts around the web.

From the email announcing the results:

Click this link to see the complete findings. You can see the responses to the open-ended questions by clicking the link (here or) just under the title of the study.

None of the results are very surprising to me. If nothing else, the effect of this survey is to reinforce existing perceptions about blogs and their use in business.

That is one of the great things about traditional research methods. Test. Re-test. Test again. The more of this we have – provided the methodology is sound – the better we will be able to formalize rational and effective practices. Congrats and thanks to out to Edelman/Technorati for the effort.

Old issues…

Suffice to say that I had a previous post in drafts responding to some of those that criticized the survey. After some thought, I’ve come to conclusion that responding to them will be fruitless and futile. First, they rarely respond. Second, their criticism was mis-guided and seemed to lack appreciation for traditional survey research methods. Thirdly, they failed to recognize that established large firms are naturally going to first embark on such survey efforts with “tried and true” survey research methods. There is nothing wrong with that.

Simply put – the best PR begins and ends with sound research. Some people may have forgotten that. This survey, so far, seems to be sound. I’d like to see the methodology published, though. Number of expunged responses, etc… Hey, I’m selfish. I want to show it all to students.

So, I’ll just state that the preceding link’s post – and others – missed the point that survey research is needed in the area. If those that undertake efforts use standard practices, I see nothing wrong with it. In fact, I applaud their interest in the topic and their efforts in trying to further the body of knowledge.

Those that don’t appreciate such efforts are – sadly – sometimes the ones that don’t try to better the discipline, anyway. I can give specific examples.