The Bedroom Project
Comments (0) Perhaps you’ve heard of “The Bedroom Project.” A number of the trades have covered it, including Radio World:
It sounds like something vaguely kinky to be sure — a bunch of guys in their 50s and 60s wondering what’s happening in the bedrooms of people in their late teens and 20s. But Jacobs Media founder Fred Jacobs assured a crowd at the NAB Radio Show in Charlotte that the intentions of “The Bedroom Project” were completely above-board: an attempt by his firm, with strong support from Arbitron, to learn much more, in detail, about how people aged 17–28 really relate to the many technology and media options at their disposal. “Arbitron had the desire to dig deeper, to learn more about this demographic, which we all know are difficult to research,” Jacobs said. But getting into the heads of his research subjects — 31 men and women from Columbus, Ohio and Los Angeles — required more than the usual focus-group studies. Instead, Jacobs turned to a growing field called ethnographic research, in which researchers spend extended periods of time with their subjects, interacting with them in their homes or other intimate settings. “Ethnographic research is done by the Procter and Gambles of the world. This is the first time we’ve seen this in radio,” said Steve Goldstein, executive vice president of Saga Communications, as he introduced Jacobs’ first presentation of the “Bedroom Project.” “One of the keys to ethnography is making subjects comfortable,” Jacobs said. To accomplish that, Jacobs and Arbitron couldn’t use their usual — older — researchers. Instead, “The Bedroom Project” hired and trained a crew of interviewers in the same age group as their research subjects, sending them out to conduct two-hour videotaped interviews in the subjects’ homes and vehicles.
Read the full story here.
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