Chapter 5 Research: Understanding Public Opinion

Chapter 5 Research: Understanding Public Opinion

1. Research

   • Vital Function in the process of PR
     • Provides initial Info necessary to plan PR action and perform the important role of evaluating its effectiveness
   • Issues management
     • Early identification of issues that may impact a client or organization

2. Proving the worth of PR

   • Collecting Formal Research Data
     • Descriptive & Inferential Methods
       • Descriptive
       • Inferential
     • Methods for obtaining Inf (Qualitative)
       • Observations, Interviews & questionnaries
     • Sampling Methods
       • Simple Random
       • Systematic
   • Formal, Scientific Research Techniques
     • Content Analysis
     • Survey Research
     • Experimental Research
   • Preliminary Research TEchniques
     • RECORD KEEPING
     • KEY CONTACTS
     • SPECIAL COMMITTES
     • FOCUS GROUP
     • CASUAL MONITORING
     • INTERNET, LIBRARY & DATABASE

3. Measuring Public Opinion

   • Public Opinion
     • Mass Opinion
       • Represents an average taken from a group with different opinions
     • Identifying Publics
       • Involves carefully targeted populations. Break down the audience into meaningful subgroups and design specific comm strategies for each segment
     • Environmental Monitoring
       • Fastest growing category of PR Research. IS THE MONITORING, EVALUATING, AND DISSEMINATING OF INFORMATION TO KEY DECISION MAKERS WITHIN AN ORGANIZATION

4. Special PR Research Techniques

   • PR Audit
     • Relevant public
     • The Organization's Standing with Public
     • Issues of concern to publics
     • Power of publics (We / They / Disparity / Recommending)
   • Communication Audits
     • Network analysis
     • Readership surveys
     • Communication climate surveys
     • Content analysis
     • Readability studies
   • Usability Research
     • Technique first applied to product & software development, UR helps assess both the OBJETVIE & SUBJECTIVE response of users to web sites
   • Social Audits
     • 1960
       • Attitude and opinion surveys that measure the perception of various publics about and organization's social responsiveness. QUANTIFY impact of the org in the public
   • Organizational Image Surveys
     • Familiarity of the Public with organization / Degree of positive & negative perceptions / characteristics public attribute to the Org.