How to define different information needs within your target population

Understanding a community often begins with broad audience research, providing a general overview. However, recognizing the inherent segments within any population is crucial. It leads to more nuanced insights of specific groups. This granular approach helps media ventures make informed decisions that lead to more targeted reporting and products. 

To effectively evaluate the potential impact of targeted information strategies, we must delve into the nuances of its various segments. By understanding how different segments of a community interact with information based on their mindsets, behaviors, and preferences, we can uncover critical areas for intervention and growth.

Segmentation within a community can be approached through several lenses:

• Demographic segment (e.g. gender, age, ethnicity): This segmentation provides a basic understanding of a population and is often easily accessible. However, it can oversimplify complex behaviors and needs.
• Socioeconomic segment (e.g. education, income): This way of seeing the community helps understand purchasing power, access to services, and social influences. It provides a more nuanced view than demographics alone.
• Psychological segment: Psychological segment groups offer the understanding of audience motivations and preferences. It allows for highly targeted messaging and the development of content that resonates on a personal level.

To quantify the psychological segmentation of the audience, we used survey questions designed to identify distinct personas through response clustering. 

This data-informed approach allows us to move beyond generalizations and design more effective and inclusive solutions by addressing both the shared and unique challenges faced by different groups within the migrant worker community.

Classifying Audience Groups Through Mindset Survey

To understand the audience’s mindset, we designed a survey with somewhat binary statements. The approach is similar to a personality assessment, tailored to specific research objectives.

We began with establishing two dimensions of the audience's mindsets. Ideally, they need to be completely independent from each other. In our case, we selected Progressive versus Conservative and Communal versus Individualistic. This is no hard science and it’s important to state that the ranges are a choice and could be completely different.

Then we brainstormed relevant elements of each dimension. 

These dimensions were defined by contrasting elements. For example, “Adaptable, growth and change” versus “Unadaptable, acceptance, and stability” are characteristics of Progressive versus Conservative. “Community-connected, connected, future-focused” versus “Self-reliant, alienated, present-focused” defines Communal versus Individualistic.

The survey included seven binary dimensions: Rootedness versus mobility, tradition versus modernity, self-reliance versus community support, present focus versus future orientation, risk averse versus opportunity seeking, focus on self versus focus on others, and active searching versus passive receiving.

Survey participants assessed their alignments with each statement pair within each dimension, selecting the option that best represented them.

These helped us design the mindset survey questions as following:

Please score 1-5 according to your self-assessment: 1 means you lean strongly toward A, and a score of 5 means you lean strongly toward B. There is no correct answer.

Conservative versus Progressive

Which statement do you agree with more? A. Even after living in a new place for a long time, I still don't feel at home. B. I adapt quickly to new places and immediately feel at home.

Which statement do you agree with more? A. I prefer a stable life. B. I prefer adventure and trying different ways of living.

Which statement do you agree with more? A. All situations in life exist for a reason, I should view them with equanimity. B. When encountering unreasonable situations, I should strive for the rights I deserve.

Individualistic versus Communal

Which statement do you agree with more? A. Life feels quite lonely, I'm just by myself. B. My friends make me feel warm and happy.

Which statement do you agree with more? A. I prefer to solve problems on my own, I don't like seeking help. B. When I encounter problems, I seek help from friends and colleagues.

Which statement do you agree with more? A. I focus more on current problems. B. I prefer planning and preparing for long-term goals.

Which statement do you agree with more? A. I feel lost in life, without goals. B. My life has hope, and I'm moving toward my goals day by day.

Numeric values were assigned to participant responses, eventually leading to vectors like (3,4,5,1,2,3,4).

Using multidimensional clustering algorithms, specifically KMeans, we grouped similar data points into clusters. The resulting clusters provided a basis for segmenting the audience, helping identify patterns indicative of similar mindsets and identify directions for further analysis.

Clustering analysis revealed patterns both within and across the identified audience segments.

With KMeans, we segmented the audience into four distinct persona groups along two key dimensions:

• Progressive versus Conservative: Reflecting adaptability, openness to change, and growth versus preference for stability and acceptance.
• Communal versus Individualistic: Reflecting community-connected, future-focused mindsets versus self-reliance and present-focused tendencies.

Quick Reference: Cluster Demographics

The survey also asked demographic information and perspectives about information needs. Based on the clusters, we created the demographic profiles for each group as follows. 

Although it might not fully represent the target community, profiling from sample responses provides potential direction for sizing opportunities and helps frame further research.

Detailed Segment Analysis

Progressive-Communal: This segment exhibits the strongest sense of belonging and least loneliness across clusters. They report high satisfaction with educational information. They demonstrate high digital literacy, though a significant portion express skepticism about information reliability. Despite their strong social networks, nearly half the respondents in this group struggle to identify appropriate information sources. Even more striking is that almost two thirds report difficulty understanding the information they find, despite their higher education levels - a disconnect that requires further investigation. Their higher education appears to correlate with a refusal to accept injustice and actively seeking to defend their rights when violated.

Conservative-Communal: This segment features a high proportion of well-educated and female participants, with the highest representation in white-collar jobs. They generally maintain positive outlooks on life and report low levels of loneliness. They prefer stability, require longer adaptation periods to change, and value long-term planning. Career advancement is a key concern, with over half citing lack of growth opportunities in their current positions. They struggle with work-life balance, being most likely to report insufficient time for children's education and seeking after-school care information. They lead all clusters in technology usage for information gathering, though more than half of respondents maintain concerns about information reliability. This group reports the highest overall information satisfaction and shows no significant barriers to information access compared to other clusters. Similar to the Progressive-Communal segment, their higher education appears to influence their response to rights violations, with many actively seeking remedies. However, they show mixed attitudes toward injustice, with less than one-third viewing it as normal and expressing no clear opinion.

Progressive-Neutral: As the largest segment, this group shows high representation in manual labor. They demonstrate the strongest ability to adapt to new environments, maintain strong friendship bonds, and display moderate optimism about life. Their orientation toward adventure and long-term planning exceeds that of both Conservative groups. Their primary concerns center on understanding fundamental rights and school enrollment policies. They demonstrate strong preference for technological channels to access information, while showing the lowest skepticism about information reliability. Among all clusters, they are least likely to rely on word-of-mouth information. This group reports the highest satisfaction across all information categories and demonstrates the greatest confidence in knowing where to seek information when needed. This group shows a proactive approach to problem-solving, with most actively seeking information to resolve issues when faced with injustice. They generally reject the normalization of unfair treatment, with only a few accepting injustice as a regular part of life.

Conservative-Individualistic: With moderate education levels (middle/high school) and high representation in manual labor, they strongly prefer stability and focus on immediate rather than future concerns. They report the highest levels of social isolation, with the majority feeling friendless and lonely, struggling to adapt, and expressing hopelessness about their future. Despite being least likely to report growth limitations in their work, they show minimal interest in upskilling or entrepreneurship information. They show the strongest preference for word-of-mouth information and lowest use of technological channels for information, while expressing the highest skepticism about information reliability across all groups. This group reports the lowest satisfaction with information across all categories, primarily due to trust issues and difficulty locating information sources. Their pessimistic outlook appears to influence their response to unfair treatment, as they show the highest tendency to accept injustice as normal and the lowest likelihood to defend their rights when violated.

Key Patterns Across Segments

Our cluster analysis reveals several critical patterns that transcend individual segments, offering valuable insights for media strategy development.

Trust mechanisms exhibit marked differences between progressive and conservative groups. Progressive segments show greater willingness to engage with digital platforms. In contrast, conservative groups display strong preference for information that flows through established personal networks, with trust built primarily through community validation. This division suggests that successful information distribution requires fundamentally different approaches for each segment.

Perhaps surprisingly, information comprehension barriers persist across all education levels. Even within the Progressive-Communal segment, where most have higher education, two thirds report difficulty understanding available information. This challenge appears even more pronounced in other segments, suggesting that education level alone does not guarantee effective information consumption. The persistence of these comprehension barriers across segments points to systemic issues in how information is currently presented and distributed.

Social isolation emerges as a universal factor influencing information-seeking behaviors across all groups, though its manifestations vary. In the Conservative-Individualistic segment, this isolation reinforces reliance on immediate social circles, with almost all reporting feelings of loneliness and limited social connections. Even among more progressive segments, social isolation shapes how information is sought and validated, with members of our target population often confined to specific information networks that may limit exposure to diverse perspectives and opportunities.

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