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For press inquiries, please contact Minda Frank at mfrank@mcgrc.com or call Minda at +1 212 431 2252. November 2007: Launch of SOHO Research Centre at MCG MCG announces the opening of the SOHO Research Centre, a boutique, state-of-the-art facility in the heart of one of Manhattan’s most vibrant downtown neighborhoods. This new, well-equipped facility is conveniently located and easily accessible for clients and respondents. Audio and video recording as well as live video transmission are available. Our knowledgeable staff can meet a wide range of recruiting needs. The SOHO Research Centre is the only facility in SOHO to provide exclusive use of its focus group suite to one client at a time, ensuring exceptional service for every client.
May 2007: Scientific evaluation of Weekly Reader in-classroom use presented to International Reading Association MCG professionals presented the results of its scientific evaluation for Weekly Reader at the recent International Reading Association’s conference in Toronto, Canada. The study—entitled “The Effect of Weekly Reader on Second Grade Students’ Vocabulary, Content Acquisition and Literacy Behaviors and Attitudes”—is the first evidenced-based, randomized controlled trial to assess the educational impact of supplementary magazines in elementary schools. “Our evaluation demonstrated that Weekly Reader has a significant impact on students in two key areas,” said Dr. Michael Cohen. “Children in the study who were regularly exposed to Weekly Reader spent more time reading outside of school, and they also learned and retained specific content cover time. As a result, Weekly Reader can be said to have a demonstrated positive effect on rare vocabulary and non-fiction content acquisition—a claim that, to our knowledge—none of its competitors can make.” April 2007: Study of media awareness, access and usage among disadvantaged and middle class populations cited as seminal by US Department of Education Michael Cohen Group professionals presented the results of the firm’s benchmark study of media awareness, access and usage among caregivers and their young children—who represent income levels ranging from below the poverty line through middle class—to the US Department of Education (DOE) on April 19, 2007. The study—conceived and conducted by MCG as part of its Ready to Learn grant activities—sought to identify and understand the attitudes and behaviors of a sample of 1600 caregivers regarding their young children’s (ages 2-8) pre-literacy skills and early literacy acquisition, as well as their access to and use of various media and technologies. The findings described an accurate picture of household media access and usage by this group of adults and their children. Result also revealed caregivers’ explicit and active involvement with their children’s literacy acquisition. The study is the first to explore media access and usage and literacy acquisition behaviors among a large sample of below-the-poverty-line families. The DOE cited the work as “seminal,” and is currently engaged in disseminating the results to a wide variety of audiences throughout the education community nationwide. April 2007: Wild About Safety: MCG team visits Underwriters Laboratories global headquarters At completion of its children’s safety study, Underwriters Laboratories (UL) recently hosted members of its MCG research team for a facility tour at UL’s global headquarters outside of Chicago. UL, along with Disney Educational Productions, commissioned MCG to conduct a national survey exploring young children’s knowledge of safety preparedness and prevention, in order to inform the creation of an in-school safety video and classroom materials targeting students ages 5 to 8. Based on the survey results, Disney and UL developed a rough-cut animatic for formative assessment via in-classroom testing by the MCG team. MCG’s formative findings will guide the refinement of the video’s safety content. Entitled “Wild About Safety,” the video features Timon and Pumbaa of Lion King fame. It will be released for classroom use this fall of 2007. At the invitation of Laura Bush, members of the Total Learning (TL) team visited the While House to discuss the TL initiative’s impact on young children in the Bridgeport, Connecticut area. The First Lady’s chief of staff hosted the meeting. The Total Learning initiative—developed in Bridgeport, Connecticut—is designed to address the persistent achievement gap between students from impoverished backgrounds and those from middle/upper class backgrounds. As a key TL team member, MCG is tasked with conducting a formative evaluation of the program in a pilot kindergarten classroom this academic year, and a summative or scientific evaluation of the program as it is introduced to more classrooms in the 2007-08 year. “The initiative embraces the best of the Head Start program and couples it with a unique arts in education pedagogy to deliver core curriculum,” explains Charles Tisdale, head of Action for Bridgeport Community Development (ABCD). “We believe in the ‘whole child’ approach to education, and are committed to rolling the program upwards to grade 1 next year, with MCG’s help.” March 2007: MCG named evaluator and formative research team for Braincandy Braincandy announced the addition of Dr. Michael Cohen to its board of directors, and the selection of MCG to serve as Braincandy’s formative research and evaluation team. A Seattle-based company, Braincandy is an award-winning creator of educational products and services for the early-learning, preschool market. February 2007: Launch of MCG Media Lab at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan MCG’s Media Lab at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan (CMOM) opened in February, with its first study for a children’s entertainment client. The facility, housed on the third floor of CMOM, is the first of its kind. It enables observation of the ways in which children, families and educators interact with media content and technology. The lab is equipped to study a broad range of distribution platforms—including TV, film, computers, handheld devices, electronic toys and the Internet—and employs advanced devices that track eye movements and the chronology of user inputs from keyboards, mice, joystick and voice activation. DICON hosted its international digital content conference in Seoul, Korea this past November, and asked Dr. Michael Cohen to present his award-winning paper “Changing at the Speed of Light,” to attendees. In his address, Dr. Cohen gave his audience an overview of the current media and technology industry, and discussed its impact on children, youth and families. “The future is changing the present, “ stated Dr. Cohen. “It has transformed the way children play, how they are taught, how they spend their time and so forth. It has created a big change in the way children understand and evaluate themselves.” The change or shift “creates unprecedented opportunity for the creators, producers, marketers and distributors of children’s media, products and services,” he continued. “Those who can give children an accurate reflection of their experience actually provide them with what they need—to know that they are understood in an increasingly insecure world.” September 2006: Dr. Michael Cohen participates on No Child Left Behind panel sponsored by the National Journal's Policy Council Dr. Cohen and other education experts explored the impact of Ready to Learn at "No Child Left Behind: A Mid-Point Assessment," an event sponsored by the National Journal's Policy Council. A significant part of the discussion was dedicated to the Congressional reauthorization of the NCLB legislation. Dr. Cohen is Principal Investigator of the Ready to Learn Partnership and author of A Child's Life: Learning, Literacy and The Media, which was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education and PBS for the 2005 Ready to Learn Summit.
August 2006: Dr. Michael Cohen and the PlayWorks Media Laboratory featured in New York Times Dr. Michael Cohen is quoted in this New York Times article on the Children’s Museum of Manhattan’s PlayWorks exhibition, which will focus on interactive museum education for children under 5 years of age. The permanent exhibition will include a research laboratory, also known as the media lab, which The Michael Cohen Group LLC has built in partnership with the museum and the Ready to Learn Partnership. The media lab will enable Michael and other researchers to observe how children interact with electronic media. Click here for the full text of the article. Under a grant from the US Department of Education, the Ready to Learn Partnership (RTLP) was formed in September 2005. Comprised of a coalition of private and public-sector institutions, along with six universities across the nation, the members of this partnership are dedicated to creating engaging media designed to develop young children’s emergent literacy skills, with a particular focus on determining the best utilization of media as an educational intervention in the lives of our nation’s most disadvantaged children. The Michael Cohen Group is serving as the Partnership’s Evaluation Team. With our new state of art research facilities, The Michael Cohen Group will also be able to offer our private-sector clients rigorous product research in interactive gaming, computer usability, handheld devices and the appeal of television and film content. July 2006: MCG joins the Alliance for a Media Literate America (AMLA) MCG is proud to become a member of the AMLA, a national organization dedicated to promoting media literacy education. MCG is also conducting the evaluation for the Media Education, Arts and Literacy (MEAL) Project, a project undertaken by the AMLA and Just Think. June 2006: On the Ground After September 11 finalist for Best Book 2005 Edited by Yael Danieli, Ph.D. and Robert L. Dingman, Ed.D., On the Ground After September 11: Mental Health Responses and Practical Knowledge Gained is a compendium of firsthand accounts of mental health professionals who counseled patients affected by the September 11 terrorist attacks. Included in the book is Dr. Michael Cohen's chapter "Strategic Communications and Mental Health: The WTC Attacks, 1993 and 2001," which details the role of crisis communications in addressing mental health needs of affected populations. To read the full list of the finalists, please visit USABookNews. Michael and Leonard Cox will also be attending the preview screening of Project Rebirth on September 6. Dr. Cohen sits on the advisory board of Project Rebirth. February, 2006: Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. release latest study The Girl Scout Research Institute has released a report entitled The New Normal? What Girls Say About Healthy Living, based on a large-scale national study conducted by the Michael Cohen Group (MCG) and commissioned by the Girl Scouts of the USA. On January 26, 2006 The Girl Scouts conducted a briefing at the U.S. Congress in Washington, D.C. on the findings and implications of this study. The report explores the general attitudes and perceptions of girls toward a variety of important health-related issues (nutrition, exercise, weight), the influence of adult role models in determining girls' health-related information, and the impact of demographics and culture on attitudes toward health, body image, and health-related information. MCG's work informing this report consisted of qualitative research in the form of 16 focus group interviews conducted with girls ages 8-17 across four markets, and quantitative research in the form of an online survey of 2060 girls, 461 boys, and 599 mothers. This was supplemented by a mall intercept survey of 400 African-America, Latina, and Asian girls to provide additional insights into correlations between race and health issues. October, 2005: MCG selected as evaluator of the Ready To Learn Partnership The Michael Cohen Group (MCG) is proud to be selected as the Evaluator and a Core Member of the Ready To Learn Partnership (RTLP), a consortium that has been awarded the U.S. Department of Education's Ready To Learn media grant. This five-year award will be used to develop effective educational media products for children. The consortium includes WTTW (Chicago Public TV), Word World, MCG, and other educators, distributors, and media and communications experts. MCG's role as Lead Evaluator in this program is to conduct all formative and evaluation research over the five-year lifetime of the award. Dr. Cohen is the Principal Investigator, heading up a team of researchers that includes eight major U.S. universities. The Ready To Learn grant is designed to create quality educational media that will help our most disadvantaged children to learn to read and write, as well as to identify how media can best be used as an educational tool in the years ahead. To read the U.S. Department of Education press release, please visit the U.S. Department of Education website. June, 2005: Michael Cohen speaks at Seeley Conference Dr. Michael Cohen served as one of the key speakers at the 20th annual Seeley Conference - the annual conference of the floriculture industry. The conference, held in Ithaca, New York, June 26-29, was entitled "Captivating the Elusive Consumer." Dr. Cohen presented findings from a nationwide study aimed at understanding the relevancy of floriculture in the lives of consumers. The study, conducted by The Michael Cohen Group LLC in December 2004 and January 2005, was commissioned by the Society of American Florists. It was designed to explore consumer attitudes and behaviors about floral purchasing and to inform the development of marketing strategies for the floral industry. May, 2005: MCG helps Jones Apparel Group launch cause platform As part of its cause marketing practice, MCG was instrumental in the selection and development of a cause platform for Jones Apparel Group, Inc. On May 3, Jones Apparel Group announced the launch of a corporate-wide cause program and the creation of Jones New York in the Classroom, a nationwide program to improve the quality of education for children through the recruitment, retention, and support of teachers in America's public schools. Through this program Jones Apparel Group will commit financial resources and the energies of its widespread employee base to the long-term support of teachers. As part of this effort, Jones Apparel Group has partnered with four leading national non-profit organizations to provide the networks to bring the program to life in communities across the country: Teacher Count, New Teacher Academy, Fund for Teachers, and Adopt-A-Classroom. The development of this cause marketing initiative was guided by The Leverage Group, a global marketing consulting firm that specializes in brand, cause, and entertainment marketing, and informed by The Michael Cohen Group LLC through a comprehensive program of research among Jones Apparel Group consumers and employees. The research was designed to help identify a charitable cause that would resonate with consumers, motivate employees, and serve to stretch the company's brand, and to inform the development of messaging to drive participation among all audiences. April, 2005: MCG conducts research for Sesame Street's Rechov Sumsum/Shara's Simsim On behalf of Sesame Workshop, The Michael Cohen Group LLC concluded a two-year, multi-country study assessing the impact and reach of Sesame Stories - the Workshop's new children's program designed to help 4-7 year-old children in Israel, Jordan, and the West Bank and Gaza to appreciate diversity and develop mutual respect. The research effort involved a series of telephone and door-to-door surveys and evaluations conducted in Jordan, the West Bank, and Israel, with Jordanian, Palestinian, and Israeli children and families. Building on the success of its ground-breaking Rechov Sumsum/Shara's Simsim series, an Israeli/Palestinian co-production, Sesame Workshop developed this new program initiative, which is co-produced by Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian children's media providers. March, 2005: New Poll to Fuel Lifetime Television's Campaign to Stop Violence Against Women As Lifetime heads to Washington for it’s “STOP VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN WEEK,” a new poll conducted by The Michael Cohen Group shows that more than 7 out of 10 young women and men ages 16-24 know someone in an abusive relationship. The vast majority of young people (72%) believe that violence against women - defined as domestic violence; acts of sexual assault, such as rape; stalking; and, verbal, physical, and emotional abuse - receives too little attention. To this generation, violence is no longer a private, personal matter, but rather a critical societal problem which public institutions should take the lead in addressing.
The dramatic survey
results come as thousands of advocates, survivors, business and
political leaders, athletes and celebrities descend on the capital for
Lifetime’s 4th annual “Stop Violence Against Women Week,” March 7-11,
and as the Network officially re-launches its Emmy-winning on-air,
online, community and legislative initiative
Our Lifetime
Commitment: Stop Violence Against Women. February, 2005: MCG hosts conference for Department of Education's Ready to Learn Program
On Feb. 3rd and 4th
in Baltimore, MD, The Michael Cohen Group LLC facilitated a conference,
"A
Child’s Life: Learning, Literacy and the Role of Media,"
for the Department of Education’s Ready to Learn Program. Given the
extraordinary increase in the use of media in children’s lives, the
conference was convened to understand the impact on our youngest
learners. Conference participants – leaders in education, research,
media, technology, and public policy – examined these issues with the
goal of forming new partnerships and identifying the best uses of media
to prepare and educate our young children. MCG worked in conjunction
with the DOE’s Ready to Learn Program to set the
conference
goals. January, 2005: Michael Cohen advises Disney on Tsunami crisis response In the aftermath of the tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia, the Disney Corporation called on Dr. Michael Cohen’s expertise in the area of trauma and crisis response, resulting in the development of “Express Yourself” — a series of messages presented on the Disney Channel and designed to inspire children to express their feelings about the event, to connect to the world, and to share their thoughts on universal themes.
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