Technical jargon: What does "study" actually mean?
Benno Maggi explains marketing and communications terms in his column "Technical jargon".
In the love-hate relationship between communications agencies and journalists, a new word has become popular in times of digital uncertainty that almost guarantees publication of the content: study. So if you want to make an impact on the public today - and that is the core task of the communications industry, nota bene - the best thing to do is to have a study prepared and disseminated by eager journalists. But what is a study? At one end of the definition spectrum is art: In art, a study is nothing more than a sketch. Nude studies, for example, are made by the artist before he puts the masterpiece on canvas, which is sold overpriced by his descendants or by art dealers after his death.
At the other end is medicine, where we talk about clinical trials, which are used, for example, to bring new drugs or treatment procedures to market. An endlessly long and complicated process. These studies have to be carried out with sick and healthy subjects in large numbers before it can be proven that the project does more good than harm. Somewhere in between, but closer to sketch than evidence, are the social and communication science case and field studies that are increasingly flooding the industry.
There is probably no study yet on where this need for studies comes from. But what has been proven is that the more complex the organizational structures and decision-making processes are, the more important the argumentation becomes. That's why it's easiest to back up a decision with a study. And the general academization of professions - also in the communications industry - also plays its part.
At Swiss universities of applied sciences, the number of master's theses has jumped from 361 (2008) to 4658 (2018) in the last 10 years. Most of them are based on some questionnaire that is sent out into the world and then interpreted, no matter how big N is, the main thing is that it looks like a study. Sociologists had a simple answer for those commissioning case or field studies back in the 1970s: "Tell us what kind of result you want and we'll ask our questions accordingly."
*The Author: Benno Maggi is co-founder and CEO of Partner & Partner. He created the column "Vom Fach" in the NZZ Folio and was in charge of it for years. He presents and decodes words and terms that can be used either for small talk, being important, getting excited, playing Scrabble or simply for fun.
