Techniques for Classroom Research

Youth researchers will be offered new insight into American kids' values, attitudes, and lifestyles, along with tips on how to get into the classroom to talk to them, at a series of forthcoming seminars hosted by iYAM.

iYAM (The International Young Author's Magazine Anthologies(r)) has been in school classrooms since 1984 and now works in more than a dozen countries including China, the UK, Australia, Germany, Russia, Canada and the US, putting it in a good position to show other researchers the way.

According to iYAM's founder, Richard Austin, 'Both researchers and marketers are increasingly aware that connecting to the teens and tweens populations is essential to product development, brand positioning and overall business economics. With teens and tweens concentrated in classrooms, the educational environment is the obvious place to conduct research. However, schools only allow corporate research involvement in the classroom under the right circumstances'.

The iYAM seminar provides an understanding of educational protocols that must be met to successfully implement research. These include simple solutions for getting projects into classrooms, parental permissions and direction for how to work with the critical gatekeeper teacher population. The last includes how to emphasize the educational value of research projects and how to help teachers and schools measure learning outcomes.

Also included is a 'show-and-tell' presentation of iYAM's WordCHECK(r) research. This is a dynamic methodology gathering information from kids about their values, attitudes, lifestyles and their most favored survey techniques. It recognises that kids don't always talk the same language as adults, or want to open up about likes and dislikes.

In a recent example, a pizza company wanted to better understand how kids perceived their market and approached iYAM with a traditional survey, but were advised to take a different approach. An essay contest among school-age kids, 'How to make the perfect pizza', was designed to be educational and therefore agreeable to teachers, fun for the participants and tell the pizza company what they wanted to know. iYAM used WordCHECK key word profiling to identify kids' pizza priorities in their own language.

The seminar will be held in Chicago, IL on May 17, 2004 at the Westin O' Hare. Complete program details are available at the iYAM web site at www.youngauthors.org via the 'Connecting to Kids' link.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.