Many people are often confused about what PR practitioners do. Many believe that it is simply event planning to raise publicity about a client. However, for the most part, that is not the case. A proficient PR campaign consists of numerous steps including Research, Action, Communication and Evaluation (otherwise known as the RACE model). The first step in the process is often the most important, research. Without the essential research elements taking place before a campaign, a practitioner will not know in what area to focus their efforts.
Research tells you, what your public thinks about your client, the best methods for approaching that public, what message should be sent to that public to incur a specific action or a change in beliefs. Research will allow you to set goals for your campaign by giving you a beginning margin to evaluate your results against. It will tell you what other organizations did in similar situations (best practices). Research will tell you all this and more.
There are two ways to classify research methods, primary and secondary OR qualitative and quantitative. To give examples of each, I will share the research we conducted for my current PR campaign for Independent Living Services for Youth. Primary research elements are ones a person conducts himself or herself. Our primary research elements include: focus Group, interviews, ethnographic study and surveys. Secondary research is research that has already been conducted. Our secondary research elements included a demographic study of Norman, Okla., a media audit and bibliography/content analysis.
Quantitative data is data that is numerical and statistical in nature. Qualitative is not numerical; it captures information that is not statistical. Quantitative data included demographic studies and surveys. Qualitative data included our focus groups, interviews and ethnographic observations.
The following links give more information about research elements.
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