More Peer Reviews

For my final blog post, I thought it would be interesting to return to the two blogs I reviewed for my first peer reviews post and see how Sacha and Paige's blogs have come along since I first looked at them in the beginning of the semester.

I enjoyed going over Sacha's blog again.  She always provides links to articles and explains them thoroughly in her posts.  Her posts are consistently interesting as well.  I especially liked her last blog on experimental research that evaluated a popular fast food restaurant and human behavior.  She integrates information from the textbook and class lessons into the blogs and presents them in an entertaining manner.  She also discusses several different aspects of non-profit public relations.  By reading her blog, I learned that the field is more expansive than I thought it to be.  Sacha provided valuable insight to non-profit public relations with her analysis and I think she should keep blogging on this field.  Obviously it is one she is interested and knowledgeable in.      

It looks as if Paige has remained consistent in providing her readers with entertaining and informative posts.  Her blogs have a pattern.  First she describes the topic of the blog, then she describes how it relates to Fashion PR.  Always, she finds great examples to show how the research methods we have been studying are useful in fashion.  What I like about her blog particularly is sometimes she does not include already existing examples of how the method is used in the field, so instead she explains an example of how she thinks the method can be used.  These, such as in her survey post on jeans, I believe are really helpful to her readers and shows her already thinking in the public relations professional mindset.

    

Experimental Research

Experimental research is referred to in our textbook as a way to "control the chaos." Literally, experimental research is all about control.  The researcher controls every aspect of the studied environment, with the exception of the variable the researcher wants to manipulate.  Because of this control, experiments are helpful in determining causation: finding out exactly what caused something else. 

For an experiment, there needs to be a control and an experimental group and the groups should be randomly assigned.  To be successful, a dependent variable should change because of the experimental treatment from the researcher.   

In Food and Nutrition Public Relations, isolating a variable and testing the effect it causes can be quite helpful.  This news release, titled "New Science Further Supports Dairy as a Major Nutrient Contributer to American Diet," is a great example.  This release described research studies which uncovered data making it clear that dairy foods are extremely important in the American diets, especially with children.  Accordingly, their conclusion is that higher dairy consumption leads to higher nutrient intake, better diet quality, better bone health and has been linked to the decreased risk of diseases.  Also, the dairy food group was found to be the top contributer of vitamin D and also to contribute significant amounts of phosphorous and potassium. 

To get to these findings, the researcher had to have isolated the variable: dairy consumption, and increased the intake in the participants of the experimental group.  The control group's dairy consumption would have remained the same as when the experiment started.  What then resulted after this experimental treatment could be evaluated and the difference could be seen between the two groups.  That is how an experiment works and why it is such a beneficial research method.        

Survey Research

This week in class, we have been learning about survey research and how it is the most popular rsearch method in the industry.  The method is so popular because it is cheap, can gather a lot of information with immediate feedback and most importantly, surveys collect quantitative data which is easier to categorize and analyze than qualitative data.  Surveys, according to our textbook, are generally conducted in one of two ways: questionnaires or interviews.  The information then collected is used to make generalizations about the larger population the company or product is targeting.  Once these generalizations are decided upon, the client can then use this data to form their communication objectives and how their campaign will progress from there.

Surveys can be very helpful in Food and Nutrition Public Relations.  Since surveys have the potential to delve deep into participants' personal opinions on matters and why they feel this way, food and nutrition clients can definitely use this to their advantage.  Even better, when a survey shows up favorably for a new food or vitamin, the results can be distributed to the mass media to alert the public of how favorably this product has so far been received and perhaps persuade others to try it.

Here is a very interesting news release titled, "Cupcakes or Cash? New Survey Reveals People Choose Favorite Foods Over Money," of a survey aimed at finding how connected people are to their comfort foods.  The survey found that 40 percent of American adults cannot be pulled away from their comfort foods, (examples given include pizza, tacos and macaroni and cheese,) even if offered cash to not eat them.  The survey was conducted by the American Heart Association to help fulfill their goal of leading people to live a healthier lifestyle without giving up their favorite foods.  It is interesting to me that right in the lead, the release states who the survey was conducted by.  This is great because it shows the researchers did not attempt to be deceitful to their participants or in distributing their information.  

The American Heart Association certainly used the right method to conduct their research.  It allowed them to survey the appropriate number of the American adult population and find out about how attached they really are to their favorite foods.  For the record, I wasn't surveyed, but I would've chosen cupcakes too.