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. 

More Peer Reviews

For this blog, I reviewed two fellow classmates' blogs I have not yet commented on: James' blog on PR Newswire releases he finds interesting and Kevin Mahoney's blog on Social Media PR.

The thing that I liked most about James' blog is how he brings in other students' views even when he is writing on a specific topic and not commenting on other people's blogs.  He brings in other students' views and uses what they wrote to strengthen what he wrote.  He did this for his post on unobtrusive research and I thought the other student perspective really added to the blog.  I had never thought to do this before, but it makes a lot of sense to include fellow classmates' views in the posts rather than just focusing on what is done professionally.  In James' most recent blog, he wrote about Qualitative Research in Nike Soccer. Sports seems to be an area of focus he uses often in his blog and like I have said before when reviewing a sports blog, I do not know much about the field so I find sports blogs to be interesting reads.  This blog is the first one I have looked at so far out of my classmates that has reviewed a YouTube video instead of an article or story.  I think this is a neat idea and definitely one I may try in the future to bring a different feature to my readers.  I recommend reading James' blog because he really grapples with the information he's writing about, makes an effort to bring in different sources like press releases, other students and YouTube videos and overall he writes in an interesting way.   

Kevin's blog was also a great read.  It was interesting to me because at my job over this past summer, I worked closely with people in the marketing department and one of their titles was the Manager of Marketing, Promotions and New Media.  Her primary role was to control the content of our website, Facebook and Twitter, as well as coordinating the Facebook and Twitter of our branches.  Before this, I knew that some corporations were utilizing social and new media.  It was not until this point that I realized the extent of it and that social and new media sites have the potential to make or break a company.  Kevin focusing his blog on this is smart and I'm sure very educational for what he will encounter in his future public relations profession.  I really liked his blog for many reasons.  First, he connected his topic to Quinnipiac and that automatically makes his blog relevant to not only PR students or Communications students, but our whole campus community.  He also commented on other students' blogs and how their topics use social media for public relations.  Social media, I found out from reading Kevin's blog, can be useful for every kind of public relations.  I will definitely be paying attention to his blog in the future. 

Qualitative Research: Useful in Food PR

Qualitative research is an important research method that can be advantageous to a client when in-depth information on participants' attitudes, behaviors, value systems, concerns, motivations, aspirations, cultures and/or lifestyles is desired.  Qualitative research takes place in natural settings to make the participant(s) feel at ease. 

There are different ways this type of research can be conducted.  One of these is qualitative observation, during which the researcher quite simply observes people in their natural environments.  The researcher does this by watching, listening and recording what they see.  If they are participating, they record what they experience as well.  Another type is the focus group.  The focus group is a type of interview, but with more than one person.  It consists of a small group of people and the researcher acts as a moderator: breaking the  ice with the participants, getting them to voice their true opinion and getting them to interact with each other.  The focus group is helpful in gathering insights, ideas, opinions and experiences from the participants.  Key, though, is to ensure the participants are all within the client or product's target audience.  If not, the feedback collected is useless.  

Here is an article that describes a study done on the consumption of nutritional supplements in adolescents.  This subject caught my interest because though this study was conducted in 2001, the debate concerning vitamins and how much of the nutrients are actually absorbed when they are taken orally is still continuing today.  For this blog, I focused on how this experiment used qualitative research.  The study was conducted in order to gather information on which supplements adolescents took, why they took them and how they thought they were benefiting from them.  78 adolescents, age 11 to 18, were studied for this experiment.  In order to understand each of their participants' perspectives thoroughly, the big group was broken down into focus groups of 16.  The responses from those focus groups were then content analyzed, which means identifying themes and placing responses into categories.  From this the researchers then were able to determine that adolescents may consume supplements and other things they think help them in both academic and athletic performance such as energy and sport drinks, without a clear understanding of health risks.  Thus, they were able to conclude that more education was needed in this area.

Qualitative research is personal and may discover things people did not want or realize they should reveal.  For a public relations professional and for their client, this example shows how helpful qualitative research can be by really going in-depth to their audience's perspectives and showing what should be done next.        

       

More Peer Reviews

This week, my blog post will focus on my evaluation of two of my fellow classmates' blogs.  Since we are still talking about unobtrusive research in class, I paid particular attention to their posts from last week on that topic while looking at their blogs.

First, I looked at Mallory's blog on Sports Public Relations, but more specifically on professional hockey.  Though the topic of sports does not always thrill me, I can tell Mallory is very knowledgeable about sports, hockey and public relations so her blogs made for very interesting reading.  She also has brought her experience working for professional hockey into the blog which is impressive and caught my interest immediately.  Her blogs are always very detailed and thorough.  She explains the concept she will be talking about, goes on to a case where the concept is applied to professional hockey and then concludes by relating the concept and situation back to our course textbook or the field of public relations.  This was interesting to read especially in her post about unobtrusive research because we are learning about the different ways unobtrusive methods can be applied in class and it is interesting to see how these methods are applied to different fields, especially sports.  I feel I could learn a lot from continuing to read her blog.

Next, I read Alyssa's blog on public relations for fast food restaurants.  This caught my attention immediately because I can certainly learn for this blog by paying attention to issues Alyssa covers in her posts.  Her posts are very conversational, personal and opinionated, which makes them fun to read.  Her posts are also extremely packed with detail.  This is especially true in her post on unobtrusive research.  Instead of writing about unobtrusive research in general, she went into detail about content analysis, a method of unobtrusive research that can be helpful in the fast food industry.  This was extremely educational and interesting.  I am sure with the fast food industry and their link to America's problem with obesity, Alyssa will have a lot more to write about so I will be paying attention to her blog in the future. 

Unobtrusive Research: Helpful or Creepy?

For about a week now in class, we have been learning and practicing unobtrusive research methods.  Unobtrusive research is a method used to conduct public relations research and during which, the researcher does not influence the situation or outcome in any way.  This is done through careful attention and observation of different elements based on what the researcher is trying to find.

I can see both a major advantage and disadvantage to this method.  Clearly, this can be one of the most effective methods used by public relations research professionals because without the known presence or observation of a researcher, individuals are truly themselves, holding nothing back.  They could get the same results from a survey or focus group if the individual was exceedingly honest even while they knew they were being watched and recorded, but it is not likely to happen often.  This is because unobtrusive research is often used to delve further into sensitive issues which people are not willing to admit.  The results the researchers find are truly their subjects' feelings, thoughts, preferences and dislikes without the subjects putting up a good face to seem like a better person.  This can be crucial to a research plan because a plan based on false information a subject or subjects gave because they were insecure about their true feelings can put a public relations campaign's time, effort and money in completely the wrong direction. 

On the other hand, it is important to consider the studied individuals' points of view.  I can see how this research method could be an invasion of privacy if looking for something personal that the individual did not want revealed.  Of course, there can be precautions taken to ensure the individual's information and observed results are kept private, but still they are being watched without notification or them giving consent.  To me, I believe this violates the full disclosure ethical guideline in public relations.       

Here is an example from Reuters that I like and would like to share because both the pro and con aspects of unobtrusive research are included.  In this article, the unobtrusive research tactics are equated to Big Brother: the concept of being watched by the government or some other sort of officials to learn private information otherwise unattainable or protected.  Big Brother is a phrase often used when individuals feel their privacy has been compromised.  However, important to my earlier concern of full disclosure, the people who wanted to eat in this restaurant had to sign a consent form stating they were willing to be watched.  

The article is about a restaurant that opened in 2007 in the Netherlands.  It was equipped with several unobtrusive cameras to monitor their diners' eating habits and meal preferences.  The cameras were aimed to find out what the customer preferred in color, noise, smell, food preparation, packaging, taste and even light stimulus.  Daily, the restaurant staff made small changes such as the friendliness of the waitstaff to observe how the customers reacted.  Kitchen staff was also monitored through the cameras so "how they are working" could be observed.  This was all aimed to subtly influence customer behavior, which is the ultimate advantage of unobtrusive research.

Because consent forms were used, I believe these actions and observations were ethical.  But this poses yet another problem.  Were the customers more likely to hold back with their true reactions to light, noise and food preparation, etc. because they knew they were being watched?  Were they more likely to be more dramatic to make sure their opinion was known?  These are important questions that should be taken into consideration while gathering data as well as while analyzing and interpreting what the data means. 

Unobtrusive research overall seems to produce great, useful results.  It is the tactics used to get those results and how those results are used where public relations professionals could potentially get into trouble.