3.1 Public Relations Research
We have earlier on established the fact that all about public relations is about human relations and that humans are dynamic beings and indeed the society in which they live is ever changing. Thus, it is one of the major tasks of the public relations man to evolve ways the update of man and the update of his society. This can only be achieved through a well-articulated research process. Indeed the first step in the public relations process is research, why do people, public relations people downplay research? Can you guess some reasons? Well, let’s see the following common reasons:
Most times they think they already know what they ought to know about the issue or problem on hand and as such they will know by and by whether or not they will be successful.
Lack of time. This is a most unimaginable alibi for not doing research, after all we often say what is worth doing at all is worth doing well and no man can be too busy for his priority. We can conclude that it is not likely to be a problem of time but a lack of appreciation of the place of research in public relations.
Lack of personnel: This is one of the many reasons organisations give for not doing research in public relations. But you and I know that good management can ensure availability of relevant hands to do research in the company or contract the research to outside agencies.
Lack of money: Well it all depends on the size of money we are talking about here.
Usually, this is a function of the overall budget for the plan or campaign. But the truth is that not all researches are expensive. You can still do research on salient parts of your campaign even if you have to work with a shoestring budget.
Lack of how-to knowledge: This is a simple problem to solve. Get a consultant research firm. As long as it’s a good one, expect dependable results.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE
Give three other reasons why you think public relations practitioners skip research in their practice.
3.2 Of What Use Is Research Anyway?
Maybe one very good reason you gave as an answer to the SAE above why practitioners avoid research is because they do not know what use research could be. If this is the case, then you are absolutely right. This is why we are examining the issue here. The May
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1994 edition of the Public relations Journal outlined six ways in which public relations practitioners can use research at virtually every stage of the public relations process:
To formulate strategy: Attempting to formulate any policy without adequate research means using an old approach to solve a new problem. You could also be aping your competition.
To gauge success: All your policies, programmes and campaign cannot be hundred per cent successful at all times (the truth is except you are a super brat, you can hardly attain hundred per cent success in public relations). You will therefore require good research to ascertain your degree of success per time.
To test messages: Very often you’ll need to test the appropriateness of your messages vis-à-vis the campaign goals and objectives as well as your target audience. This can only be done through research.
To get publicity: You cannot underestimate how much people are completely oblivious of your organisation or its programmes and activities until you do some research. Often, you can use such research as opinion polls o warm up yourself to new audiences and target publics.
To sway opinion: Sometimes you would be amazed at what some of your publics know about you as against what you think they know about you. You can only find out through good research and in the process adjust their impressions about you.
You can also use research to preempt a problem or a crisis. As we learnt in a previous unit, crisis do not just happen, they often give you warning signals. But there are times when the signals may not give you enough information to help you track or burst the crisis. This is where research comes in.
Research also helps you to reduce cost by giving you a clear direction to focus your energy on. Without research, we dissipate energy, we point the water nozzle the wrong direction, prepare the wrong messages and speak to the wrong persons. With research however, we know where we are going from the start. Moreover we won’t go about our duties based on hunches, guesses or surmises but on solid, empirical facts.
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3.3 Data Collection Methods in Public Relations Research
In doing research for public relations, various techniques are open to you. You will however choose the method that would give you the best results to help you take the most appropriate decisions. The technique you choose would depend on the nature of the problem you are researching into, the available resources and the constraints imposed by your social, political and cultural environments. You would also have to think of your budget, the skill and capabilities of your research personnel as well how much time you have on your hands.
3.4 Developing a Research Strategy
The success of any endeavour depends on knowing how to succeed at it. Knowing how to succeed depends on developing an appropriate strategy. Same goes for research. In research, you are faced with two important questions namely; what do I want to know and how will I gather that information i.e. how will I know what I want to know.
3.5 What Do I Want To Know?
When doing public relations research, the nature of what you want to know is determined by the problem you are attempting to solve by the research. What you need to know falls into any of the following: client research, stakeholder’s research, problem-opportunity research and evaluation research. You could have situations in which you have more than one problem to solve; therefore, you would need to look at more areas than one.
Client Research
When you do client focused research, you would be interested in the individual client, or company. You would want to know the size of the organisation, the nature of its products or services, its history, staffing requirements, markets& customs, competition budget, legal environment, reputation and beliefs about the issue at stake.
Indeed it is the issue at stake that decides what directions to point your searchlight when you do client research. You may want to also see the organisations competitions, what advantages do they have over it, what threats do they pose, e t c.