The dangers of using Facebook to measure hospital quality

“The problem with measurement,” Dennis S. O’Leary once said, “is that it can be a loaded gun: dangerous if misused and at least threatening if pointed in the wrong direction.”
Today, in the era of social media and “Big Data”, researchers and consultants salivate because: a) data (e.g. ‘likes,’ tweets, ‘shares’, bit.ly links) are freely available and easy to measure; and b) clients and governments have been primed for decades to believe the more data, the better their decisions.
As the political forecaster Nate Silver has noted, “Big Data will never replace thinking or hypothesis-testing.”

The Future of Consumerism

With over 250,000 educated and technologically savvy immigrants settling in Canada each year, Immigration, age, technology and research are inextricably linked to marketing in the 21st century with technology as the ultimate equalizer.

CLSA + RIWI Blue Book

Neil Seeman and Eric Meerkamper of RIWI discuss the crisis of credibility in the market research industry, the challenges of managing data collection, bias and interpretation, and the patented, Nano-Survey ™ ‘Smart Data’ technology RIWI has developed to address these issues. See The Blue Book

The Future of Consumerism Forum

“The Future of Consumerism” – Applying RIWI-powered data on the attitudes of more than 38,000 respondents from the U.S., China, India, and the Philippines, RIWI President Eric Meerkamper presented on the future of consumerism to a forum hosted by Apex Public Relations Ltd. Download the full white paper here.

Global corruption index for The International Association of Prosecutors

At the annual 2012 conference in Bangkok, RIWI presents the first-ever global corruption index for the International Association of Prosecutors (IAP) on what ~400,000 random people in over 150 countries think about a wide number of justice issues, including bribery from different types of government officials, and including different countries’ understandings of how their criminal justice system works. The IAP is the only world-wide association of prosecutors, established in June 1995 at the United Nations offices in Vienna.

XXL: Obesity and the Limits of Shame

RIWI CEO’s global health policy book “XXL: Obesity and the Limits of Shame” (Univ. of Toronto Press, 2011) shortlisted for the Donner Book Prizefor the best book on policy by a Canadian. The book draws on RIWI generated research which allowed the authors to capture real time global health data. These data capture over 50,000 people’s opinions around the world on the proper role of government in obesity policy.