Chapter3

Chapter 3

Research: Planning, Monitoring
and Evaluating

This is PR 11th Edition
Newsom, Turk and Kruckeberg

Objectives
• To understand the role of research in public
relations practice
• To appreciate the need for ongoing research and
the cyclical pattern of PR research
• To realize when it is best to go outside to an
individual or firm for research needs
• To evaluate secondary research and determine
its use in a PR situation
• To know how to do primary research for PR fact
finding


Research is Fundamental
• Every PR activity begins with analyzing
some facts, gathered through research
• Initial research is often secondary:
making use of facts and data already
collected
• Primary research, gathering new
information, often follows


Formal vs. Informal Research
• Informal: less rigorous and perhaps less
pre-testing, but still structured with
research designs and protocols
• Formal: more rigorous, more structured
– May be qualitative or quantitative


Research Basics
• Record keeping: files, archives
• Records needed for organization itself, for
personnel, for organizational activities
and publications
• For ease of retrieval, records must be
kept in a logical, well-organized and
easily retrievable form


Research Sources
• Scholarly
– Done by academic institutions
(students, faculty)
– Sometimes funded by government,
foundations or professional
associations
– Often published in scholarly or
professional journals and made public


Research Sources (cont.)
• Government
– Widely available, often free in print or on
Web
– Local, state and federal


• Commercial
– Done by research, advertising and PR
firms, marketing companies
– Usually proprietary, so not published,
although some may be given limited
access to data
– Commercial organization may release
data if it reflects favorably on the
organization

• The Web
– Organizational sites most dependable
– Search engines help fine-tune finding
the information you are seeking
– Diligence in determining validity,
reliability of Web information is critical


• Mass media and professional publications
– Often applied research
– Much scholarly research published
here


• Telephone interviews
– Landlines give inadequate results
– Mobile phone interviews are costly
– Electronic surveys are easier to
manage


Research on Trends, Issues
• Useful for both planning and monitoring
PR activities, programs
• Helpful to know the environment into
which your message will be moving
• Environmental scanning helps determine
strategy and plan
• Evaluation once program is implemented
determines if environment has changed


Research on Publics
• Use of demographics
• Use of psychographics
• Use of geodemographics
• Use of ongoing research because publics
not static and priorities change


Research on Media
• Learn where your publics get their
information
• Learn which media have content and
readership compatible with your message
• In addition to mass, trade media also
important sources of information
• Shift to social and digital media for
information
• Personalization of media choices

Research on Media Audiences
• Subscriber information
• Circulation figures
• Ratings of TV programs
• Radio and on-line video monitoring


Cycle of PR Research
• Preliminary research in planning stage
• Research for pretesting messages,
surveys
• Research for fine-tuning
• Research for final evaluation


Informal Research
• Generally conducted without rules, procedures
that would permit someone to replicate
• Unobtrusive measures, e.g., color-coded tickets
to an event
• Communication or opinion audits (evaluate
response to all of an organization’s
communication efforts)
• Analysis of clippings, transcripts of media
coverage (quantity, quality of coverage)


Informal Research Risks
• Validity of sources
• Inability to replicate
• Difficulty of upholding ethical standards
• Depending too heavily on intuition or
experience for making critical decisions


Formal Research
• Qualitative
– Measures by describing
– Conducted either in lab or “in the field”
– Honesty, confidentiality and objectivity are
also important values
• Quantitative
– Measures by counting
– Conducted either in lab or “in the field”
– Honesty, confidentiality and objectivity are
also important values

Steps in Formal Research
• State the problem
• Select a manageable and measurable
portion of the problem to address
• Establish definitions to be used
• Conduct a search in published literature for
relevant information
• Develop a hypothesis


Steps in Formal Research (cont.)
• Design the experiment or study. This
involves defining the population you wish to
study and then choosing a sampling
method
• Obtain the data
• Analyze the data
• Interpret the data to make inferences,
generalizations
• Communicate the results

Types of Qualitative Research
• Historiography, case studies and diaries
• In-depth interviews
• Focus groups


Types of Quantitative
Research
• Textual analysis
• Content analysis
• Survey research
• Sampling (probability, nonprobability)
– Accidental
– Purposive
– Quota/stratified


Stages of Research Questions
• Preliminary, exploratory: “I wonder”
• Prediction: “I think”
• Hypothesis testing


Testing Hypotheses
• State your hypothesis
• State the opposite of your hypothesis (the
null hypothesis)
• Determine the probability that null
hypothesis could be true
• Reject null if that probability is slight
• If probability is significantly larger, don’t
reject the null – but neither can you
“prove” the hypothesis

Sampling Audiences
• Cross-section surveys
– Probability sample (random)
– Quota sample (by known characteristics)
– Area sample (by geography)
• Survey panels
– Consumer panels to test products, ads
– Usually selected on cross-sectional basis, but
quota
– May not physically meet but instead
participate through teleconferencing, mail

Questionnaires
• Most familiar data-gathering device for
surveying audiences
• Face-to-face
• By computer
• By social networks
• By direct mail
• By list
• Respondent’s interest in subject influences
rate of return

Questionnaire Tips
• Best way to get a good response rate is
to write a good questionnaire
• Closed-ended questions easier to code
and tabulate than open-ended, but may
yield less insightful data
• Questions should be logically ordered and
separate: not several questions imbedded
in one giant question


Questionnaire Tips (cont.)
• Provide clear instructions so the
respondent knows what to do to respond
• Always pretest
• Cultural, governmental differences
abound across borders: some types of
questions are inappropriate in certain
situations and locations, and some
governments prohibit the asking of certain
kinds of questions

Questionnaire Formats
• Semantic differential scales: measure
variations in intensity, often using
adjectives that are the opposite of each
other
– Pleasant – unpleasant
– Fair – unfair
– Exciting – dull
– Accurate - inaccurate

Questionnaire Formats (cont.)
• Summated ratings
– Strongly approve – strongly disapprove
– Strongly agree – strongly disagree
• Scale analysis
– Dichotomous questions
– Multiple choice questions


Delphi Studies
• Respondent-generated questionnaire
• Begins with open-ended questionnaire
• Verbatim responses tabulated and reported, and
circulated among all respondents who are asked
to rate or rank the responses
• Responses placed into categories based on their
ratings or rankings
• Categories are then rank-ordered by all
respondents
• An interactive, repetitive process


Research Applications
• Identify problems
• Analyze problems
• Develop programs and guide their
implementation
• Measure results of programs


Research is a Cycle
• Begins to assist in planning
• Moves on to testing and revising
hypotheses
• Leads to further fact finding and
assessment
• Shifts to monitoring ongoing programs
• Concludes with final evaluation that
provides input to help in the planning
cycle of the next program

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