¿Se Habla Español?

It was recently reported that the growth of the U.S. Hispanic population on the Internet in recent years has accelerated faster than previously expected. Fifty-two percent of the U.S. Hispanic population is now online, representing 23 million users, according to a new report by eMarketer.

So, is it time to move more research among Hispanics online? I don’t believe so. While their presence online is growing, it is not a representative sample of the broader Hispanic population. Much of the growth is fueled by younger, bilingual, U.S. born Hispanics. A study completed online could result in extremely distorted results.

We have been fortunate to have several clients run parallel studies among Hispanics both by telephone and online. In each case, they threw out the online results and only relied on the telephone study. The difference in findings across the two methodologies was tremendous. And many findings from the online approach just didn’t pass the “gut” test. Some of these differences are likely due to socio-economic and acculturation differences between Hispanics who are online and those who are not.

For now, if Hispanics are part of our research assignment, we are likely to recommend telephone or in-person. I would be interested to hear of others’ experience with different data collection methods among Hispanics.