research methods

The well-worn label of “everyday Canadian” or “average citizen” echoes from the pronouncements of our elected officials, policy experts and journalists who tell us about who we all are, what we happen to believe, or how we spend our time on this pursuit or that. But upon scrutiny, this concept doesn’t hold up.

In Canada, we commonly measure the extent of poverty by determining a poverty line. An alternative approach is to assess a household’s standard of living by looking at the goods and services it has, or has access to, and the activities in which it participates. This method of measuring poverty is called a material deprivation index (MDI).

One often reads in these pages about the many challenges facing marketing research today, but the industry overall is clearly alive and well. The most recent estimates of economic activity in 2013 totalled $600 million in Canada and over US$40 billion worldwide.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. As Americans and their leaders prepare for the most important and divisive presidential election in decades, pollsters, who like to think of themselves as scientists outside the arena of political contention, have become targets of partisan venom from both the Kerry and Bush camps.