MedEase Transcription, Inc. Helps Northwestern University Understand Gen Y

With MedEase Transcription, Inc.’s help in transcribing all of the Gen Y participant focus groups, Northwestern University did a study on Generation Y (called Millennials), regarding engaging this younger target market in Election news. During this project MedEase discovered that Generation Y just wants to be communicated to like any other group.

Chicago, IL, June 29, 2009 – ‘Engaging Millennials in Election News on the Web’ was a particular research project from Media Management Center (MMC) of Northwestern University that had Carmel Muelhausen of MedEase Transcription, Inc. intrigued. After many years of providing transcription services for medical practices and a multitude of other businesses, Carmel was not prepared for the results of this one assignment from NU. It seems that a group of students, her childrens’ ages, gave insight into the way they would like to see the election news. And interestingly enough, Carmel discovered, it was no different than she, as an adult, wanted to be treated by the news media.

“Millennials” had a growing interest in the 2008 elections, but frequently clicked away from political news online because they felt too much information was coming at them all at once and too many different things were competing for their attention. The findings were the result of a qualitative, in-depth study of a diverse group of 89 Chicago-area young adults in 2008, to identify what would “catch their eye” and deepen their engagement in serious news online.

Some of the dislikes that the Millennials identified in news media online were:

• Too many things competing for their attention, without any indication as to which is most
important;
• Too many details;
• Too wordy; not distilled to the essence;
• Too many choices;
• Too much text; too high a percentage of text to graphics, or a screen of mostly text;
• Site features which they don’t immediately understand;
• Pages or stories that go on and on and on;
• Too much emphasis on trivial stories;
• Too much dissonance and verbal abuse.

“I actually think this younger generation has communicated what we basically all want [or don’t] from news media,” said Carmel, “This was one of the most interesting transcription projects we have done to date – and that is saying a lot!”

The study can be viewed at: http://www.mediamanagementcenter.org/research/youthelection.pdf

This post was submitted by JoTo Extreme PR.