主播大秀 Media Action was awarded the President's Medal at the 2014 MRS Awards.
It was a proud moment for our research team when 主播大秀 Media Action was awarded the President鈥檚 Medal at the annual this week. The medal is given to an individual or organisation that has made 鈥渁n extraordinary contribution to research鈥�. The society paid special tribute to the rigour of and to its innovative聽.
These awards, the largest of their kind in Europe, are highly prestigious. I accepted the medal from the Market Research Society President, Dianne Thompson on behalf of the 主播大秀 Media Action and our Research and Learning team of up to 100 specialists conducting research, evaluation and insight activity in 37 countries across 42 languages in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
But why did we win? A mixture of reasons really.
Not many organisations can claim to have surveyed populations on the scale and in the environments that we do. We鈥檝e conducted research in places from rural Somaliland to the snow-capped mountains of Nepal, and in one year alone we engaged more than 60,000 people worldwide through our research activities. This activity is critical to contributing to our understanding of how our programmes are having an impact on people鈥檚 attitudes, knowledge and behaviour. We don鈥檛 just research the reach of our projects and programmes but we measure the impact our activities have on improving people鈥檚 lives.
Evidence matters
But above all perhaps, we are increasingly committed to generating evidence about what works and what doesn鈥檛 when working with media to achieve development outcomes. The slogan for this year鈥檚 MRS awards was 鈥淏ecause Evidence Matters鈥�.聽 It does and we are determined to continue to ensure an evidence-based approach lies at the heart of our efforts to work with media to improve people鈥檚 lives.
Understanding of the complex needs of our audiences, many of whom are marginalised, lacking a voice or living in poverty is absolutely critical. Research informs our work before we begin a project, as we progress through it and it helps us to measure its success. It is wonderful to have this recognised by other research professionals.
主播大秀 Media Action produces a range of research publications.