This has got me fired up. I wasn't planning on posting this, but I can't get over it. First I read this post in ClickZ which I found very informative called OPA Study: Web Bolsters Offline Campaigns. It showed the results of a study that tracked media consumption and found among other factoids that:
One-quarter of consumer media time is spent on the Web with the medium eclipsing all other channels during work hours.
And
Television's reach was increased 51 percent in the morning, 39 percent at mid-day, and 42 percent in the afternoon daypart, when combined with online usage. Print experienced a similar lift with its height occurring in the evening daypart.
All this seems fine and dandy except for one sentence in the article that put it in perspective. According to the article, "The researchers recorded the media consumption of 350 people in Indianapolis and Muncie, Indiana." For me the story ended there. The last time I checked 350 people in Indianapolis and Muncie were hardly representative of the US population so I filed this article as interesting, but not very expandable.
Next thing I know, this is running around the internet and within the agency I work for. The findings were released on CNET in the article Study: Web is the No. 1 Media. Now besides having an incorrect title which they later corrected (web is the #1 workplace media), it fails to point out that the study was limited to two cities.
Hmmm, I wonder why? Perhaps it is because CNET is a member of OPA (quote from article - "CNET Networks is a member of the Online Publishers Association. OPA's
Eyes on the Internet 2006 Tour is sponsored by CBS Digital Media, CNET
Networks, the New York Times Media Company and Reuters.com, among
others"). Perhaps it was left out because the author didn't find it critical to the story, but as anyone with a research background will tell you, research studies are all about the sample group used for analysis (see my old post Lie A Little More With Statistics).
The study is what I would call interesting, but not very actionable and I 
wouldn't extrapolate it. Am I surprised the web is the #1 workplace media? Heck no. If you've ever worked in corporate America then you know the web is the only place in town until your boss looks over your shoulder. However, the study is UNBELIEVABLY important if you live in Muncie Indiana.
PardonMyFrench,
Eric
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