This Week...

...we are to comment on what some of our classmates are saying in their blogs.

In looking through the blogs, I came across Lindsey's blog, and read her entry on qualitative research.
Lindsey clearly understand this concept and gave a great example from her own experience. She interned for NBC News and part of her job was to listen to a hotline where viewers would call about their feelings towards the MSNBC programs. She did mention that they did get their fair share of "crazies" who would call everyday, trying to send the perfect design to fix the oil spill. However, Lindsey did say that it was a great way to get feedback from the viewers.

Lindsey then goes on to talk about how NBC uses qualitative research. Lindsey found that NBC research was "created to estimate the demand for television commercial time during the upfront market. The upfront market is a brief period in late May when the television networks sell a majority of their on-air advertising inventory." This is interesting for the simple fact that NBC uses qualitative research to better their own company. They collect data on advertising spending by industry, company, advertising media type (TV, print, radio, billboards, etc.), broadcast network, and advertising agency.

The next blog I read was Lisa's. I also read her entry on qualitative research. I especially enjoyed reading the section she wrote when she discussed the MTV show, The World of Jenks. Personally, I love this show. She discussed how in this show, he is actually conducting ethnographic research, a method of qualitative research. The show is fascinating because Jenks physically puts himself into different environments each week to tries and observe and understand the culture. Jenks interacts with people that range from homeless to star rappers. If you haven't seen the show yet, you have to watch it!

I really liked how Lisa related something that can appear boring to a topic that is easy to understand and is in fact, interesting.

Qualitative Research: Focus Groups

So this week I found a very interesting website. It is about a qualitative fieldwork facility located in Paris called the Louvre Focus Group.

It is a company that provides various focus group services including different rooms to conduct your focus group, a translation service, and moderating group sessions.

The actual website is very well done and it looks like a very luxurious place. (Though I did note that no prices are listed on the website itself, which makes me think this is most likely a very pricey service.)

I had no idea that something like this actually existed, but it makes sense. I thought that focus groups would just be conducted at the company's location. However, this makes much more sense. These facilities are equipped with everything from rooms with two-way mirrors to leather couches to LCD televisions. It makes the focus group experience an enjoyable one! I would also imagine that conducting your focus group at a neutral location can cut down on biased responses from the participants.

Something else I liked about the website is there is an option for a virtual visit, which makes the space look even more impressive.

I would assume that this facility makes it very easy for your focus group to be successful. They can provide an unbiased moderator to get the group talking to each other. The rooms are extremely conducive to allowing the participants to talk to each other very easily as they have comfortable furniture as well as food provided.

Overall, a facility like this one in Paris would make the focus group easier to conduct and would make getting good results much more possible.

What Other People are Saying...

In reading through the other blogs this week, I found some interesting entries.

One of which was Sacha's entry on research results. Sacha's focus is non-profit organizations. So, in this entry, she discusses the importance of research in this field. I have always found non-profit organizations interesting. It seems like a lot of hard work, but also extremely rewarding.

Sacha is correct when she says that "research needs to be conducted in order for the organization to find who is donating and why. Research is also important to see what the company needs to improve and what areas they need to be focusing on. In addition, research helps nonprofits see who needs help and in what ways. The most important part of the research process is the results because this helps nonprofits continue successfully in the future."


Sacha then goes on to talk about Habitat for Humanity. She talks about how influential research can be for this specific organization. Sacha says, "the results of the research are extremely important for Habitat for Humanity. It helps them spread their message of the importance of affordable housing. It also shows that if people donate or volunteer to build the houses that they will directly be aiding members of the society. Thus the research can help in gaining more donations, which will help in buying building supplies." Habitat for Humanity does so much good in so many communities.

The next blog I read was Sam's blog. Specifically her post about the new movie, The Social Network. This is the new movie about the founding of Facebook. It was really interesting how Sam related this to unobtrusive research. She mentions,
"he (Zuckerberg) saw that people loved being able to see pictures and feeling connected with friends. Each week Facebook would expand because of his unobtrusive research. Without him asking other students he was able to amplify by adding different applications and fields. Zuckerberg was not directly asking for advice and was not intruding on Facebook followers asking what they liked or did not like, he was able observe and expand his network by observations and indirect measures."

It is cool that even the development of Facebook used forms of unobtrusive research.

Unobtrusive Research

This week, we looked at different types of unobtrusive research. This basically means looking at something from a distance without affecting the process. It can be used to study events, characteristics, and even human behavior. In class, we covered content analysis and indirect measures.


I found a website that talks about content analysis. It is interesting to read that often times, too many companies do not use the proper form of measurement, or do not even use it at all in analyzing their PR data. And often times, when content analysis is used, it actually fails to meet the needs of the PR professionals? Why is this? Are people not conducting it correctly?

The same thing goes for indirect measures. There could be many variables at work when dealing with indirect measurement. For example, this week we were asked to determine which door at the entrance of our School of Communications was more popular. I looked at the wear of the door handles as well as the wear on the floor and tried to see if there were any fingerprints on the glass doors. It was actually difficult to tell which door was more popular. Also, there could have been other variables, such as weather, that could have been at work.

I will admit that this week, it was extremely difficult to find an article that related to unobtrusive research conducted in France. I do not really know why this is. In writing this blog, I have also found that there really is not that much published about conducting PR in France. I hope that this is not a bad sign for my future plans to live/work in France...