2. Ethics in PR Its is important to uphold the rules of ethics when conducting research. The NIH training identified three principles essential to the ethical conduct of research with humans: Respect for persons Individuals should be treated as automatons agents Beneficence Do no harm Maximize possible benefits and minimize possible harms Justice Justice requires that individuals and groups be treated fairly and equitably in terms of bearing the burdens and receiving the benefits of research. There are also important rules for research regarding human participants, pregnant women, and children.
3. Media Monitoring Media monitoring reports are used by companies to track customer perception of a specific product, or the company in general. They perform a scan of social media sites such as Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and blog sites for consumer comments. The below websites are beneficial in compiling social media research data: Flickr Quantcast.com Icerocket.com Technorati.com
4. Working in Group Projects I am not the biggest fan of working in groups, but one of our major projects in class was a group project. We also did in-class group assignments. In my individual group project we : Created a blackberry messenger group for correspondence Met once a week and sent constant e-mails It is also important in groups to: Be courteous and respectful Flexible Carry your own workload Identify a purpose Positive attitude
5. Paper Format There are helpful cites for creating citations such as: Citationmachine.com Easybib.com Be sure to abide by all the proper guidelines and citation rules as to not result in academic penalty. Check with the teacher for deciding which format to use, MLA, APA, Chicago, and Turabian Citation rules although tricky, have a specific format to safe guard against plagiarism.
6. Research Project My research paper “Strengths and Weaknesses of Today's College Students” taught me how to correctly construct a public relations research paper. The purpose of research papers are to: Answer a specific question Solve a problem My research project taught me: The format of a research paper Do not bold titles Single space in between sub titles Appendix should be in a separate section of the paper Have a well prepared presentation binder , with EXTRA copies How to write a correct Introduction, Methods, Results, and Lit Review
7. Surveys How to construct a survey for GSU faculty on the strengths and weaknesses of today’s college students . We used Zoomerang.com for creating the survey template and monitoring results. I loved this website. It was an excellent tool for collecting data and results.
Editor's Notes
What I have learned in my Public Relations Research (Crn 4330) class. Professor Nixon was the instructor Fall 2009.
Ethics is defined as the moral difference between right and wrong. All participants must have informed consent before being involved in any experimental research. Children as young as 12 are allowed to consent in experiments. Research is only allowed on human participants when the research is attempting to answer a question not previously stated.
Media monitoring reports are used in a variety of fields, from public relations to measuring advertisement success. It provides clients with detailed descriptions of consumer opinion with specific documents. Social media sites are becoming representative of public opinions as time goes on.
Group projects and assignments are a daily task in the professional setting. One weak link and result in a negative reflection of the group as a whole.
Apastyle.org ,MLA.org, Chicagomanualofstyle.org are formatting websites for help. APA is used primarily to site sources in social sciences. Chicago formatting was created by the University of Chicago Press. Both Chicago and Turabian presents two options for citing material: 1) allow you to cite sources in the footnotes or endnotes in the paper 2) author – date system .
The thesis is one of the most important portions of the paper. The entire paper is based on supporting or disproving this. The hypothesis and purpose are also important. All are located in the introduction. Always double space. Leave one-inch margins on left and right unless previously noted by professor. Label all tables and figures, ex Table 1.
Other do’s and don’ts of surveys.. Keep questions short, avoid biased items, make answer options clear, avoid double barrel questions, make items clear (don’t assume the readers competence)
