PR FOUR STEP PROCESS - NO 1 - RESEARCH

PR FOUR STEP PROCESS
1 Research
2 Planning
3 Communication
4 Evaluation


1 RESEARCH is Fundamental
- Every PR activity begins with analyzing some facts, gathered through research
- Secondary research: making use of facts & data already collected
- Primary research: gathering new info

Cycle of PR Research
1Preliminary research in planning stage
2Research for pre-testing of messages, surveys
3Research for fine- tuning
4Research for final evaluation


Formal vs. Informal Research

- INFORMAL
Less rigorous & perhaps less pre- testing, but still structured with research designs & protocols
- FORMAL
More rigorous and structured ( qualitative or quantitative)

INFORMAL RESEARCH
-Generally conducted without rules, procedures that would permit someone to replicate
1) Unobtrusive measures (color- coded tickets to an event)
2) Communication or opinion audits (evaluate response to all of an organization’s communication efforts)
3) Analysis of clippings, transcripts of media coverage


Informal Research Risks

-Validity of sources
-Difficulty of upholding ethical standards
-Leaning too heavily on intuition or experience for making critical decisions


FORMAL RESEARCH - steps
-State the problem
-Select a manageable & measurable portion of the problem to address
- Establish definitions to be used
- Conduct a search in published literature for relevant info
- Develop a hypothesis
- Design the experiment or study
- Obtain the data
- Analyze the data
- Interpret the data to make inferences, generalizations
- Communicate the results

QUALITATIVE
-Describes/ exploratory
-Conducted either in lab or ‘in the field’
-Honesty, confidentiality & objectivity are important values
-Historiography, case studies & diaries
-In- depth interviews
-Focus groups
-Observation

QUANTITATIVE
-Measures by counting
-Conducted either in lab or ‘in the field’
-Honesty, confidentiality & objectivity also are important values
-Sampling
-Survey research

Characteristics of Qualitative & Quantitative Research

Qualitative
-Produce soft data
-Uses open- ended free response with unstructured questions
-Exploratory research
-Valid but not reliable
-Uses non- random samples
-Rarely projectable to large audiences


Quantitative
-Produce hard data
-Uses close- ended questions with forced choice
-Highly structured questions
-Descriptive research
-Valid & reliable
-Uses random samples
-Projectable to large audiences

(No 2 - Planning and other continue in the next posting)