I have been struggling with an idea for a thesis that will be fairly simple to execute, will explore some aspect of social media and will be useful to TPWD.
Perhaps this is the research question to explore:
Participants in the Texas Outdoor Family program who utilize social media tools on the TPWD website will become more active in the outdoors than those who do not (as measured by future camping patterns in Texas State Parks.)
I can pull together a database of those who have gone through the workshops from July 2008 - March 2009 and then follow them over time. We know exactly who they are.
The initial survey can gauge media habits and outdoor recreation habits. Then as we add these social media applications to the website we can let them know those tools are there and encourage them to use them.
Then we track over time. We can find out which of the tools are most useful to them and which we should not bother with. We can check our state park database and fine out which of them are coming back to state parks to camp, etc.
Hmm...perhaps this is it. I will discuss with the marketing folks and with Dr. Rao at Texas State and then get on with it....
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To expand on that idea, what about also working with the parks' Friends groups to help them add social media to their sites, along with key messages, and expand your thesis to include that as well. ... -Karen Blizzard
ReplyDeleteInteresting thought. But to be honest, I'm all about keeping this as simple as possible. I just need to get a thesis done (in my spare time) and from that perspective the simpler the better
ReplyDeleteLyd, I think what you'll find (hypothesizing) is that people act in accordance with the way in which they are wired, which kind of inverts everything. The correlation or cause-effect will probably turn out to be that the people who tend to be most active, are also the type of people who tend to sign up for certain social-networking tools (or not). A social networking tool might enhance my experience, but it wouldn't pull me in a direction I wasn't already willing to go (being a time-starved person).
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