COM317 Public relations Research, spring 2008
preliminary reserch for pr campaign
Before launching PR campaign, it is a convention to test PR campaign ideas through preliminary research. Preliminary research is a basic function of PR campaign to evaluate public attitudes, identify the policies and procedures of an individual or an organization with the public interests, before plans and executions of PR campaign. Through this process, PR practitioners can test the feasibility of their campaign plan as well as garner important information to be added on actual PR campaign.
As a PR practitioner, it is highly likely that one day you will be involved in a project that will require you to collect preliminary information (data) about your planned campaign from your target audience. After the data collection process, you are supposed to write a report paper with a professional manner. Therefore, the following assignment has been designed to give you hands-on opportunity to conduct preliminary research for PR campaign.
Assignment: Working in groups of 3~4 members, you will conduct preliminary PR campaign research that target your specific audiences (e.g., elementary, middle, or high school students, their parents, consumer, or constituents) with issues that deserve to be considered. Your group, in consultation with me, will select a specific topic for your research. A few possible topic areas include:
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Research Methods: You may select any research method considered in class. For the best of your interest, a survey research method is highly recommended.
Requirements: The project will consist of the several stages of review:
o Proposal (due Feb 15): A 2~3 page proposal that constitutes introduction of final paper. Need to specify your interesting topic, current situation and background information, and the importance and feasibility of topic.
Proposal is an individual assignment. Each group will choose the best proposal out of three, which will be the topic of group paper.
► It is a group assignment from the Lit review.
o Literature Review (due Feb 29): A 3~4 page comprehensive literature review for your research. Your literature review should include references at least 15 primary research studies. Only 3 of these sources can be web sites; the rest must come from books and journals.
o Methods & Group Survey Questionnaire (due April 2)
o Result & Discussion (due May 9)
o Oral Presentation of the Research Report (due May 5,7,9)
Peer Assessment & Evaluation: Each person will also have an opportunity to evaluate his or her project members, with regard to participation in the project. I will consider these group evaluations when assigning individual grades for the project. You are encouraged to keep a diary or log of everyone’s contributions to the project as they unfold and to let me know immediately is someone is not contributing to the work. Your groups’ timeliness in meeting deadlines and professionalism when presenting results will also be graded.
Examples: You may want to find your project topic within an environment around you, otherwise explore the following links to help get ideas for the project.
o Alliance for Community Media: http://www.alliancecm.org/
o Christian Media Literacy Project http://www.cmli.org/
o MediaChannel.org http://www.mediachannel.org/classroom/
o AdBusters: http://www.adbusters.org/home/
o Move America Forward: http://www.moveamericaforward.org/
o MoveOn.org: http://www.moveon.org/front/
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