Methodology

This year’s report marks the evolution of UMR – the collaboration between Lifelounge and Sweeney Research. Sweeney Research is one of the country’s largest independent research agencies. Together, this gives you the best of both worlds – and a clear insight into the attitudes, behaviours and purchasing power of young adults.

Quantitative Online Survey… An online survey of 1751 x 16-30 year olds across Australia. The survey consisted of questions about music, sport, fashion, entertainment, travel, communication, finance, sex, health, drugs, climate change, issues that they worry about and demographics/life-stage.

Qualitative Web Forums… Online discussion forums in a private, invitation only, chat-room style session. The forums allowed open discussion around issues such as climate change, body image, drugs, cosmetic surgery and advertising.

Methodology

Qualitative Bloggie Cam Diaries… Participants were sent a “Bloggie Cam” (small, portable, digital video recorder) and asked to take it around with them for a week and record snippets of their lives for us.

Qualitative Journals… Participants were sent a journal to complete that focused on Music, Sport, Fashion, Entertainment, Technology or Communication. These individual personal reflection journals allowed for more reflection and detailed responses.

Qualitative MMS Tasks… Participants were sent a text message at various times across the week of their assignment that simply read “where are you and what are you doing? Send us a picture!”. They then snapped a picture of where they were and sent it back to us immediately. This allowed us to collect a wide range of pictures to help more fully understand their day-to-day worlds.

Qualitative Urban Influencer Interviews… Interviews with those at the cutting edge of the young adult market – those we’ve called the Urban Influencers. These include a nightclub owner, a fashion designer, a skater, and an online entrepreneur from New York – just to name a few.