Print version Recommend this page Press release
03/ 2006
Bonn, 26.01.2006
Specialist in market and social research: New "training occupation" for 2006 ready for the kick-off!
Opinion polls about everything under the sun are part of everyday life. Be it by telephone, via the Internet, in mailed questionnaires or personal interviews, consumers are continually being asked their opinion about products and services. To date, people working in the growing market and social research field are primarily university graduates. As things are now, these individuals are responsible not only for conducting research but also for the wide variety of tasks arising in connection with the preparation, organization and presentation of their research work. What has been missing to date is trained and qualified skilled workers who can perform these exacting tasks and take some of the load off researchers' shoulders. This (occupational) gap is to be remedied with a vocational training programme for the occupation specialist in market and social research that will go into effect on 1 August 2006: Representatives from labour and management, the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder [federal states] in the Federal Republic of Germany, and relevant ministries agreed at a joint meeting on 20 January 2006 to send the training regulation developed over the last several months in cooperation with the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training ("BIBB") on to the legislative process.
Specialists in market and social research will assist researchers with planning, organizing and managing their research projects. Their responsibilities will include:
- Gathering, researching and evaluating data,
- Helping design and organize questionnaires and interviewer guides,
- Organizing the deployment of interviewers, familiarizing them with their work and recording interview responses
- Checking the plausibility of data that has been collected and has to be organized, and
- Preparing survey reports and presentations during the final phase of the individual project.
These individuals will find employment opportunities with market research institutes, companies in industry, trade and the service sector that have their own market research activities, business consulting firms, advertising and media agencies and, not least of all, research centres involved in empirical social and economic research.
As a first step toward establishing this new formal occupation, the experts from labour and management, the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder, and relevant ministries advocate first introducing it in specific regions and ensuring that the theoretical part of training is offered at part-time vocational schools near the research facility that will provide the corresponding work-based experience. Germany's federal states, relevant chambers of industry and commerce, regional employment agencies and regional "sponsor" institutes and associations will fund and support these regional priority training programmes.
The first cities selected to offer this training are Düsseldorf (sponsor: RSG Marketing Research), Frankfurt (sponsor: ADM Arbeitskreis Deutscher Markt- und Sozialforschungsinstitute e.V.), Hamburg (sponsor: IPSOS/BIK Umfrageforschung), Munich (sponsor: TNS Infratest) and Nuremberg (sponsor: GfK Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung).
Further information about the occupation "specialist in market and social research" is available:
- On the Internet at http://www.bibb.de/de/21694.htm
- At BIBB from Martin Elsner, Section 4.1 Commercial service occupations and occupations in the media business,
Tel.: + 49 / (0)228 10 72 430, e-mail: elsner@bibb.de
