Even when a statistic delivers good news, it can rapidly become "bad news" if that stat is seen as distorting or obscuring reality.

Such is the case for New York City's public schools. As today's N.Y. Times reports:

A whopping 97 percent of New York's elementary and middle schools received A's or B's on the city's school report cards this year, highlighting the rise in scores on standardized tests but raising questions about the usefulness of the grading system.

It's a question of what one is measuring. If one is measuring students' test score gains, these schools and the staff who work at them deserve accolades. Unfortunately, a term like "school report card" implies to many parents and taxpayers that something else is measured, like the overall quality of a school.

And that's where a figure like 97% collides with public perceptions of school quality.

To many New Yorkers, that percentage doesn't pass the smell test. In the future, school officials might consider using a term such as "school progress grades" instead of "school report cards."

The musical Rent reminded us that a year breaks down into 525,600 minutes. (It's longer in a leap year.)

Now a researcher at Microsoft is trying to convert his life into numbers. According to this article from Wired magazine, Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell "has been compulsively scanning, capturing, and logging each and every bit of personal data he generates in his daily life."

For example, Bell knows precisely how many websites he has visited (221,173), as well as how many emails he has sent and received (156,041).

Wakefield staff take data very seriously, but we aren't keeping a running tally of all of the emails we send and receive. Hope I haven't disappointed anyone with that revelation.

Will Schuester, reporting for duty

He's persistent, level-headed and inspiring. He is Will Schuester, the teacher played by actor Matthew Morrison on the Fox TV series Glee.

And, apparently, most people wish they'd had a teacher like that guiding them when they were in high school. According to a new survey conducted by Wakefield for Classmates.com, 53% of Americans say they wish they'd found a teacher or mentor during their high school years "who believed in me and inspired me."

Maybe I lucked out. There were several teachers at my high school who nudged, humored and encouraged me to work hard. But, unlike Glee's Will Schuester, none of them encouraged me to sing. They were very wise.

Seniors are a coveted bloc of consumersThe Wall Street Journal is calling it the "next frontier in retail." And the "it" is a training program run by Kimberly-Clark Corp. to help retailers understand how senior citizens navigate their shelves, displays and aisles -- and how they sometimes struggle to do so.

Here's the stat that is driving retailers to participate in this program:

The number of adults aged 65 and older will reach 71.5 million people by the year 2030. That will be twice the number of seniors that were residing in the U.S. back in 2000.

The first baby-boomers will reach age 65 two years from now. According to the WSJ article:

Current store layouts present challenges for elderly shoppers, experts say. Worsening eyesight makes finding items more frustrating, arthritis complicates browsing and reduced balance intensifies the strain of stooping or reaching for products.

Those sentences don't exactly make me look ahead to my "golden years" with overwhelming enthusiasm. But, hey, it is what it is.

In any case, a number of retailers are putting their money where their mouth is. Example: Walgreen plans to revamp their store layouts to address these issues, and doing so will cost an estimated $30,000 to $50,000 per store.

The LA Times recently wrote about the University of Houston’s program offering credit for a P.E. class based on Nintendo’s Wii Fit.  No doubt some parents are concerned that their tuition dollars are going to video gaming.

The New York Times published a piece today lamenting the loss of foreign language teaching positions.

Inevitably, objections are raised whenever technology is married to education.  For example, not everyone was keen to bless the use of calculators in the classroom.  Either it is seen as “cheating” or there is concern that tech will replace teachers.

However, Wakefield’s work with tech brands has shown us that when it comes to consumer technology in the classroom and the workplace, the best technologies enhance human capabilities, not replace them.

For example, no doubt that some students at the University of Houston signed up for the Wii P.E. class expecting an easy A.  They have a shock coming. When Wakefield’s researchers conducted the positioning and experiential research for Wii Fit, they found that young adults actually underestimated how challenging the experience can be.  If ability has any impact on these students’ grades, they may need to get fit fast.

While the games are fun, research shows that users are actually more interested in Wii Fit as a fitness tool rather than as videogame entertainment. 

Likewise, while some teachers and parents are concerned that technology-based language learning is replacing teachers in the classroom, not all programs are created equal.  Programs such as Rosetta Stone are not designed to replace teachers, but to give teachers more tools and capabilities.

The takeaway is that technology is best used as a way to enhance the educational experience, not as a replacement for teachers and human interaction.  When this formula is followed, it produces great results for users, and increased profit for brands.

In a typical U.S. recession, those who hold onto their jobs experience virtually no wage growth. And some of them even suffer wage cuts. But the stats show that this recession is doing a dance of its own. According to the N.Y. Times:

Last winter, stories of companies cutting their workers’ pay were everywhere. FedEx said in December that it would reduce the pay of salaried workers by 5 percent. Caterpillar announced it would cut pay by up to 15 percent.

. . . For the first time since perhaps the Great Depression, it seemed possible that average hourly pay would actually begin falling, even before inflation was taken into account. But that’s not what has happened.

. . . Even though unemployment has reached its highest level in 26 years, most workers have received a raise over the last year.

. . . But the pain has been concentrated within groups. People who have lost their jobs are struggling terribly to find new ones.

The Onion recently featured a humorous satire - World of World of Warcraft - which allows gamers to play an RPG videogame of a videogamer playing a videogame. 

The clip is good for a laugh - no doubt.  But it also touches on an interesting trend regarding gamers today.

A few years ago, in our own market research, we were repeatedly hearing requests for more realistic graphics, more realistic game-play options, and more realistic plots. 

But isn't one of the key benefits of videogames the ability to "escape" into a fantasy world - where one can forget about everyday stresses and pressures?  The answer is "yes" of course.

Our consumer research has shown that one of the key benefits of videogames - especially for people with full-time jobs and for busy stay-at-home moms - is the ability to get away from it all, even if only for a few minutes. 

In recent surveys, we are seeing more and more demands for fun, fantasy-oriented games that look nothing like the real-world.

Children are back in school and feeling care-free, leaving their parents to stress over the tough decisions they face coping with a job loss or other effects of this recession.

If only that image were true. Actually, the kids who re-entered k-12 schools in August and early September brought with them some of their families' recession-induced stress.

According to this article from Sunday's Chicago Tribune:

Therapists, school psychologists and guidance counselors say they've seen a growing number of children struggling with stress due to their families' financial problems.

. . . While parental unemployment and bill collectors are familiar to children in poverty-stricken neighborhoods, they come as a harsh surprise to young people used to comfortable lifestyles. Add them to modern fears of terrorism and global warming, as well as the normal angst of adolescence, and you get an unnerving mix.

The Tribune cites new findings from a national survey conducted by Wakefield Research. One of our findings is that 33% of parents report that their children have expressed anxiety about the economy.

The article quotes a 16-year-old New Jersey student: "Money is not an issue teens talk about, so you feel like no one else is going through the situation like you. It's kind of lonely."

The federal government has issued these guidelines for who should be "first in line" to receive vaccinations for H1N1 influenza, also known as swine flu. But a George Mason University researcher is questioning the priority status that has been given to certain demographic groups.

In this article at Stats.org, researcher Rebecca Goldin challenges the reasoning behind the federal guidelines for H1N1 vaccination. She writes:

We should not be asking, “how likely is someone to die if they get the virus?” but rather, “how can we minimize the deaths due to the flu?” And for that, it is important to look at the way the virus spreads through the population.
 
... The people most likely to spread the disease to others in their age groups are children aged 5-19. These kids should be the main targets for immunization. They are already on the “first serve” list of the CDC, along with other groups that are not the main viral-dispensers.

But who do children aged 5-19 spread H1N1 to? Adults aged 30-39. And through these adults, the virus spreads to other adults aged 25 and older. In other words, as a group, adults aged 30-39 are among the most vulnerable to the virus.

This is directly in contrast with CDC recommendations, which place young children and immuno-depressed adults of all ages before this (adults 30-39) group.

Price cuts are in the news.  The Washington Post says that supermarket prices are falling, and price cuts for popular videogame systems such as Nintendo’s Wii are above-the-fold news fodder this month. 

Price cutting is a tactic that nearly every brand from canned corn to cars has embraced in the past year.  But how can a brand know when cutting costs are worthwhile, and when it’s pennywise and pound-foolish?

Price Sensitivity vs. Price Point Research

There are 2 methods, and generally, one is better than the other.  Most researchers would recommend price sensitivity research, which attempts to determine an optimal price.  This is often defined, in practical terms, as the price that isn’t so high that it depresses purchase consideration, but isn’t so inexpensive that the consumer thinks less of the product.

This is a valuable method, but it’s usually too simplistic for the marketplace.  It doesn’t consider brand perceptions, consumer demand, and current pricing among the competitive set – essentially everything you should be factoring in if you expect your research to be relevant in the real world. 

We prefer price point research, which considers demand and sets realistic parameters, meaning the sky is not the limit on pricing.  This approach takes hard costs into account, as well as the competitive set.  This is a much more action-oriented approach, since oftentimes we’re not testing for $5 versus $50, but rather a much smaller degree of change.