Research Methods

Research Doesn’t Have to Put You in the Poorhouse

2001

2001 – You don’t have to spend a fortune or go broke when designing and carrying out public relations research and measurement projects. To save money, consider piggyback studies, secondary analysis, quick-tab polls, internet surveys, or intercept interviews. Mail, fax and e-mail studies are good for some purposes. Or, do your own field research.

Selling Public Relations Research Internally

Changing The Mindset About Communications

October 2000

October 2000 – The preeminent challenge facing the public relations executive seeking to develop evaluation and measurement systems is gaining acceptance of them from all important parties, starting with the organization head who has to approve the budgets and the staffs who have to develop, execute and then interpret the resulting research.

Fun Things To Do With Measurement

2001

2001 – The point of measurement and evaluation is to help you make better, more informed decisions. A measurement report should help your business first, enhance your career second, and justify your existence third. If you focus on the first goal – improving your business, you will always get funding for the next research program.  This paper suggests 10 things that some of the country’s best-known companies have done with the help of a measurement program.

Guidelines for Formative and Evaluative Research in Public Affairs

2001

2001 – This report is a narrative description of what the best public affairs programs within and beyond the Department of Energy Office of Science are doing to formulate and assess their operations. We focus on appropriate procedures for formative and evaluative research rather than suggesting specific outcomes. Finally, we organize our white paper along the levels suggested by theoretical literature in the field: program, function, organization, and society. The entire report is grounded in the scholarly body of knowledge in public relations and public affairs.

Guidelines For Measuring Relationships in Public Relations

November 1999

November 1999 – In order to answer the question — “How can PR practitioners begin to pinpoint and document for senior management the overall value of public relations to the organization as a whole?” — different tools and techniques are needed. The authors have found through their research that perceptions regarding an organization”s longer-term relationships with key constituencies can best be measured by focusing on six very precise elements or components of relationships discussed in this paper.

Academic Research Potential for Automated Media and Information Metrics

An Agenda for Data-mining in Public Relations

2005

The data mining potential of these new tools are creating new opportunities for professional use as well as academic research. Today’s massively rich databases represent nearly 100% sample size in terms of what the media are saying. The author believes this could advance the PR profession the way that economists flourished when reliable economic and demographic data became available.

A Genre Perspective on Public Relations Message Design

We maintain that the day-to-day creation of messages are epideictic in character, celebrating the organization and its values, and inviting publics to join in that epideictic moment through shared values. In our paper, we will offer positive and negative examples, covering the broad range of public relations writing conventions and the vital connection between discourse competence and effective strategic planning.

Setting Best Practices in Public Relations Research

There is growing recognition of value of research in developing and evaluating of public relations programs, but much of this value is never realized in the marketplace. There are many possible explanations for this, but the primary one may be very basic: a lack of understanding among practitioners of best practices or fundamental research principles. Michaelson’s presentation at the 2009 International Public Relations Research Conference describes best practices for public relations research in two key areas: research methods, and quality/substance of findings. Each is a guideline to help researchers and public relations ...

Tracking Organization-Public Relationships Over Time

A Framework for Longitudinal Research

2005

Organizational relationships are almost exclusively analyzed using the data that captures the perceptions of the parties in the relationships. While useful for describing the state of a focal organizational relationship at a single point in time, or over a short period, this approach has limited utility for research involving multiple relationships over an extended timeframe. The perspective that organization-public relationships can be described and studied as objective phenomena, separate from the subjective experiences of individual participants with properties other than the perceptions of those involved, underpins the framework for tracking organization-public ...
  • Page
  • 1
  • 2