Experiences in Experiments

Human nature creates an obsession within PR practitioners to be in control of their surrounding environments. Especially when the practitioners job and paycheck relies on the success of the national campaign they are about to produce. Luckily, with the implementation of experimentalism research, PR professionals can play the role of scientists and conduct research of increased validity.  Last week, I showed ways to help professionals collect this data and form a hypothesis for their campaigns accurately and efficiently with the help of digital programs. But other ways are also as equally as proficient.

            Kaylen’s Blog, PR in Spain, provides commentary on the ways in which businesses internationally are becoming more professional by conducting more experiments.  One experiment in particular Kaylen notes is how the opinions of different countries abroad were studied by interpretation of their respectable newspaper’s articles. As quasi-semi experiment by nature, the study discussed the countries changes over time, allowing the PR businesses in Spain to discover how one can change the images of how these nations are viewed in the media and across the globe. I found this research very helpful to my blog, for information about media perception of certain geographical areas is pertinent to the success or failure of a national PR campaign. This information collected in the study that Kaylen highlighted also serves as a way to know how to alter a campaign to obtain “newsworthiness” seeing as one could know what aspects of the culture the media often highlights and play up on these aspects for increase user attention/awareness.

            Likewise, bringing attention to a campaign globally could also be obtained through what BDaunno explains as “flash mobs”. What once started as an email asking 40 friends to attend founder Bob’s show, flash mobs now take place all over the world. In Daunno’s blog Media Snapshot, I found it highly intriguing to read about these PR stunts that involve "a large group of people whom assemble suddenly into a public place to perform an unusual and pointless act for a brief time, and then quickly disperse”. In other words, flash mobs are conducted to raise awareness about something by causing such a huge scene. Thus, flash mobs benefit PR campaigns nationally as they can be used virtually at the same time in different countries to create a wide-spread awareness of a product/person, etc. Flash mobs also have no language barriers seeing as it is a stunt involving physical body language not all on speaking which provides an advantage for using flash mobs inside international campaigns. Additionally, the “word-of-mouth” nature helps to increase awareness as more and more people attend, the practitioner can virtually see how viral the message is, and how far the message reaches into different countries. Flash mobs therefore are a powerful national campaign tool, at virtually no cost. 

Conducting Campaign Experimental Research: Breast Cancer Awareness

According to Experimental-Resources, experimental research is regarded as “a collection of research designs which use manipulation and controlled testing to understand causal processes. Generally, one or more variables are manipulated to determine their effect on a dependent variable”. The site also notes that experimental research is used when there is a time priority in a causal relationship where the “cause precedes effect”, there is consistency in a causal relationship, or a “cause will always lead to the same effect” and the magnitude of correlation is of a large magnitude.

Consequently, this week I found an experimental study in Public Relations Review, that was conducted in order to see what type of emotions inside of an advocacy video for a public relations campaign would work best to increase awareness in young women about the need to protect themselves from breast cancer with “breast self-examinations” or BSE.  The study surveyed a sample of 147 young women from a large southwestern university whom viewed different videos that emphasized different emotional methods to get the viewer to see the need to protect herself. The results overall concluded that the best way to get protection in the minds of these young women was using “symbolic” modeling with respect to behavioral intentions rather than “persuasive efficacy” information which although was better than the control video shown of just a normal cancer ad without mention of breast cancer or BSE overall.

I feel that this study really depicts a way to use experimental research to aid a campaign as well as serve as a way to copy test an idea to see if it will work before implementation. Such studies help to provide insights to otherwise intangible methods of instructions and increase confidence one may have in results a campaign can provide.

The Survey System to the Rescue!

Surveys are primary data collection methods that aid global PR campaigns throughout the event-planning process. In particular, statistical surveys are quantitative research methods used to collect information about people inside of a population. For example, one can conduct a survey before the hypothesis is developed to see where the target audience statistically stands currently.  This data can be used later by the agency to compare how effective their campaign was as the firm now has the ability to see what statistics changed, if any, within the target audience. Additionally, a practitioner can conduct a survey during the event or at the "communication" stage (of the RACE acronym, reading Research, Analysis, Communication and Evaluation)to see how well people are receiving purposed messages. Also aiding the necessity for surveys in world-wide public campaigns is the simple fact that surveying does not usually cost a lot. Add that with the rise of new technologies such as a sample size calculator, and surveying has become a quantitative research method of choice for many working in the PR world.

Going in to further detail about 'sample size calculator' technology, which is used to show "how many people one needs to interview in order to get results that reflect the target population as needed. Also the level of precisions you have in the existing sample" all can be found on the Creative Research System's Web site. A site that offers a software package for all types of questionnaires and campaign data collection from web, phone, PDA, to paper questionnaires. Combine the two or choose one, Survey System also offers users live reports on results and production of tables, charts, of this data. Survey System also can run an agency's survey in different languages from Arabic, Thai, and Russian to classics such as French, German and Italian. All of which aid national PR campaigns as one could conduct data in foreign countries without changing the questions. 

Most of these advanced features are paid for, but the site does offer the sample size calculator for free as a quick aid to those collecting data for PR campaigns. Other free information the site gives out includes a guide of reminders for how to conduct a survey. The following steps are noted directly from the site:

"Establish the goals of the project - What is it that you want to learn?

Determine your sample - Whom will you interview?

Choose interviewing methodology - How will you interview?

Create your questionnaire - What will you ask?

Pre-test your the questionnaire - Test the questions!

Conduct interviews and enter data - Ask the questions!  

Analyze the data - Produce the report".

That's it! Survey System really helps to break down what needs to be done to conduct a survey and how you should go about it. I find such technologies really helpful to PR professionals, but more importantly to those who may not be as advanced in this area. College students, early practitioners, or those in another field of business who are conducting a report and need a quick crash course on data collection methods, all can greatly benefit from the use of this service. Especially important, I believe, is the systems ability to break language barriers, helping to make the data a better representation of the entire population overall.