- used prior to survey research to help researcher get enough info to ask appropriate questions int he survey questionnaire
- careful, detailed, sample examinations of the knowledge, perception, attitudes, and opinions sod members of various publics
- method of gaining an in-depth understanding of an audience without the rigor of more formal, scientific research methods
- char (age/sex/occupation) of people responding to the survey that help a practitioner classify them into one or more publics
- researcher can control ,any outside stimuli that might contaminate the results of the study
- very little PR research is done in a controlled lab setting
- u can't generalize the info to the larger group from which the focus group is drawn
- necessary to be successful *ability to keep comprehensive and accurate records*can produce critical info at a moment's nice for use inside and outside their org
- most effective way to sees the characteristics of publics in a form that allows the data to be used n planning and evaluating PR efforts
- most widely used technique for preliminary research is the
- small number of people who share some demographic characteristics-interviewed-open-ednd questions to encourage interaction-probed-assembled only once
- survey should provide a way to separate publics, rather than lump them together into one mass
- -use objectives/strategies and response-to measure techniques-get results
- communication to target publics through-open system response/policy/structure-closed system response/campaigns/projects
- must be informed at every stage by research data-early identification = scan environment for potential issues-which issue has greatest impact
- what can make PR be more effective*contribute to better understanding between publics and org
- research method that allows the researcher to systematically code and thereby quantify the verbal content of written or transcribed messages
- help identify issues before they become problems and suggest alternative courses of actions-formed for a specified length of time (duration of a campaign)-internal/external committees-decision makers-opinion makers
- 1 PR needs2. identify publics and issues3. info needs and sources defined4. facts assembled/publics sampled/ issues monitored5. info assembled for target publics
- research that has already been done by someone else-news paper-hospital records-