INTUITIVE MEDIA RESEARCH SERVICES
NOTE: This Report is Copyright Intuitive Media Limited and may be used only for agreed research and
educational purposes, and may be quoted in reports and presentations provided Intuitive Media is
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© Copyright 2006 Intuitive Media 6/12/06
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greater validity than most online surveys. We now have a practical way to engage with a
demographically representative sample of authentic children from 12,000 classrooms and 100,000
homes and access the results very quickly.
While many of these children may, through their community experience, be more web-savvy, more ICT
capable, and better equipped for communication than other children, they come from schools across the
whole of the UK and from a range of advantaged and disadvantaged areas. Previous research into the
membership has established that in the demographic dimensions of gender, ethnicity, religion, urban
and rural location, the membership is broadly representative of the UK population as a whole.
Surveys are published in both communities and usually (depending on many factors including the
children's interest in the subject and the prizes, the weather and competing major sporting events) will
attract between 1400-2800 responses.
The Surveys
The research surveys are published and promoted as Prize Quizzes or Surveys and the respondents
are self-selecting. The community Mediators and teachers encourage the children to take part and they
are further incentivised with attractive prizes ranging from mouse mats to DVDs and games consoles.
(Previous IM research has identified the prizes children want.) Children can also earn credits for
participation, which they can accumulate and exchange for additional community features like extra
home pages or new emoticons for their community emails.
The children love making their voices heard to people who really listen and they are told their responses
will be passed to people who will consider their views when they make decisions related to education.
Children also know that no personally identifiable information is passed on.
The Results
The results are analysed and displayed on a protected IM website. The sample can be sliced by any
combination of age or gender to display comparative results. Multiple-choice questions are analysed on-
the-fly. After the close of the survey, the
free
text-entry data is analysed and published in the final report.
The mediators encourage the children to respond honestly and not to say what they think adults want to
hear. IM has carried out 8 surveys to date and has found the results to be reliable in that there has been
consistency in the distribution of responses to questions common to the series of samples. While it is
impossible to fathom children's thinking, it is reasonably likely that the children are telling the truth as
they see it.
