Reference No: KLL-FO-ACAD-000 | Effectivity Date: August 3, 2020 | Revisions No.

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VISION MISSION
A center of human development committed to the pursuit of wisdom, truth, Establish and maintain an academic environment promoting the pursuit of
justice, pride, dignity, and local/global competitiveness via a quality but excellence and the total development of its students as human beings,
affordable education for all qualified clients. with fear of God and love of country and fellowmen.

GOALS
Kolehiyo ng Lungsod ng Lipa aims to:
1. foster the spiritual, intellectual, social, moral, and creative life of its client via affordable but quality tertiary education;
2. provide the clients with reach and substantial, relevant, wide range of academic disciplines, expose them to varied curricular and co-curricular
experiences which nurture and enhance their personal dedications and commitments to social, moral, cultural, and economic transformations.
3. work with the government and the community and the pursuit of achieving national developmental goals; and
4. develop deserving and qualified clients with different skills of life existence and prepare them for local and global competitiveness

DISCLAIMER: The contents of this module including the clip arts, cartoons, and photos were lifted from
different sources including but not limited to books, pdf files and websites. The credits and copyright of the
materials are given to its respective rightful authors and creators. More so, this module has been
conceptualized and localized for the purpose of the educational distance learning of Kolehiyo ng Lungsod
ng Lipa College of Communication Arts. In no way does this module should be reproduced, sold and used
for commercial purposes and by other academic institutions.

LESSON 2
PUBLIC RELATIONS PUBLICS

Let’s begin this lesson by going back to the start of this module when we attempted to define public relations.
There we saw some definitions that suggested that public relations aims to create mutual understanding
between an organization and its publics upon whom its success depends. This tells us that we cannot talk
about public relations without reference to publics. It also reminds us that every public relations effort is
aimed at a specific public per time. A public is any group whose members have a common interest or
common values in a particular situation. Publics differ from one organization to another and the publics of
one organization may not be the publics of another organization. Therefore, you have to help your
organization to identify its publics.

We shall study the categorization of public relations publics from two points of view. First, we look at the
Wragg (1993) categorization and later the Guth and Marsh (2000) categorization. According to Wragg
(1993), public relations publics or audiences can be divided into four categories which include:

1. Functional Publics: They are those publics which enable the organization to perform its chosen tasks.
These include its customers, consumers, business firms with which it relates, employees, trade unions
which represent it in its given line of trade or business, suppliers of raw materials and components.

2. Enabling Publics: These are publics which permit the organization to function within the framework of
the society to which it belongs. Such publics include regulatory bodies (e.g. the Nigerian Institute of Public
Relations, Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria, National Broadcasting Commission, etc.),
community leaders, politicians and shareholders.

3. Diffused Publics: Within this group are media organizations, pressure groups and local residents. These
are varied audiences and often, especially in the case of the media and pressure groups are avenues to
other major audiences.

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4. Normative Publics: This term refers to trade associations and professional bodies, but it could also
include political parties. Among the four categorizations, the functional publics are usually closest to the
organization and may exhibit the highest level of interaction.

It is clear from the above that some of these classifications overlap, since in some situation’s political
parties, pressure groups and politicians can include many of the same people and they might equally be
consumers or employees. But the reason for this is not far-fetched because public relations is a dynamic
field in a capricious world. This poses a challenge to you as a public relations practitioner in implementing
a campaign for your organization.

For example, if you were a public relations man for an airline you would have your customers as your
functional publics, however, among them could be individuals who reside around the airport who are
complaining about the noise of your planes through the formation of resident associations to exert pressure
on your company to change its noisy planes. Some of them could be very influential politicians. Thus, you
can have your publics streaming down into enabling publics, diffused publics and normative publics.

Guth and Marsh (2000) categorized public relations publics as follows:

1. Traditional and Non-traditional publics

2. Latent, Aware and Active publics

3. Intervening publics

4. Primary and Secondary publics

5. Internal and External publics

6. Domestic and International publics

Traditional Publics

Traditional publics refer to groups with which your organization has ongoing, long term relationships. They
include employees, the news media, governments, investors, customers, multicultural community groups,
etc. These publics are always there, however, they must not be taken for granted as they can in one minute
be allies and, in another minute, could be foes depending on how your organization relates to them. For
instance, any organization that takes the mass media for granted will learn too soon that ‘pen is mightier
than sword.’ Same goes for your employees. All it takes to bring down a manufacturing company is for an
aggrieved employee to produce a contaminated version of a product and for such product to get to the
market. This is especially dangerous where there are strong consumer associations.

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 Fig. 2: Traditional Publics in Public Relations. Adapted from Guth and Marsh (2000)

Non-traditional publics
These are groups that usually are not familiar with your organization; that is your organization has not had
an ongoing, long term relationship with them. Non-traditional publics immerge either due to changes in your
organization, the society or those publics themselves. They have always been there but not very relevant
to your organization but due to those changes, it could become imperative for them to form one of your
publics. Some traditional publics of some companies today were at some point non-traditional publics. After
several years of relevance and interaction between an organization and its non-traditional publics, such
publics could become traditional publics.
Latent, aware, and active publics
A latent public is one which, by evolving developments, common grounds of relationship is opening up
between it and your organization, but whose members are yet to realize or explore it. There is no active
relationship between both parties presently. The members of that public are not yet aware of the existence
of the relationship. An aware public is that whose members are aware of the existence of a commonality of
values or interest with your organization, but have not made any organized effort to respond to such
relationship. On the other hand, an active public has realized the relationship between itself and your
organization, and is working to manage that relationship on its own terms. Several publics at the evolving
stages of their relationship with organizations would usually find themselves at one of these levels of
relationships.

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Intervening publics
Any public that helps you to send a message to another public is known as intervening public. Naturally the
mass media fall into this group. Without the media, there is very little any organization can achieve in its
relationship with other publics.

Primary and secondary publics

You could also divide public relations publics into primary and secondary publics depending on the extent
to which they affect your organization’s pursuit of its goals. If a public can directly affect your organization’s
goals so that you have to take them into consideration virtually on all PR matters, then that public is definitely
a primary public. Here, you have such publics as your employees, your immediate community, the media,
the government, the shareholders (if your company is quoted on the stock exchange), the financial
institutions from which you obtain loans and through which you pay salaries.
Primary publics are of great importance to any organization.
Secondary publics are equally important and you must strive to have a good relationship with them.
However, the degree to which they affect your organization’s pursuit of its goals is minimal. In a world of
limited resources in relation to time and money, most companies concentrate on building and managing
relationships with primary publics. With abundance of resources, secondary publics could also get some
attention.

Internal and External Publics

Internal publics exist within your organization while external publics are outside. For a higher institution of
learning for instance, some of its publics would include students, academic staff, non-academic staff, food
vendors, etc., while external publics would include its immediate community, providers of social amenities
like water and electricity, other institutions in its state or country of location, education ministry, Joint
Admissions and Matriculations Board, embassies and high commissions.

Domestic and International publics

A final category of publics we shall look at are domestic and international publics. Domestic publics are
those within your country. International public exist beyond your country’s borders. More and more
organizations are realizing the place of international publics in their overall corporate success. It is important
to note however that the fact that a public is close to you does not make it familiar to you. To court the close
relationship of a company requires well thought out communication strategies. International public relations
are not just about the specific group or persons that your organization relates to in another country, it entails
knowledge of such a country in such areas as culture, believe and value systems, taste and preferences,
religion, business ethics, important holidays, weather, etc.

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EVOLUTION AND PROCESS OF PUBLIC RELATIONS
Origins of public relations
It is very safe to say that what we now refer to as public relations had actually been with us from the
beginning of man’s existence. Although the phrase “public relations” was invented in the twentieth century,
the practice of public relations had been since the dawn of recorded history.
Edward Bernays, one of the seminal figures in modern public relations stated that ‘the three main elements
of public relations are practically as old as society: informing people, persuading people, or integrating
people with people. Of course, the means and methods of accomplishing these ends have changed as
society has changed’.
For Bernays and other public relations historians, professional public relations has always moved with
civilization. Society was crude at the start of its life, so was public relations. Primitive society ruled mainly
through fear and intimidation; whereas more advanced cultures employed persuasion and debate. Public
relations has equally followed this trend.
The force of public relations was visible in ancient Rome as evidenced in phrases like Vox Populi, Vox Dei,
(the voice of the people is the voice of God); and Ves Publicae (public affairs).
The study of rhetoric in Athens is often seen as the beginning of public relations as a social science based
on research, planning and two-way communication. The spread of Christianity in the middle ages could in
modern sense be linked to the application of public relations technique. Before the development of
communication and technology, the Christian faith was spread by missionaries using persuasion skills by
the word of mouth.
With the invention of the movable type by Guttenberg in 1456, which heralded the use of mass
communication technology, public relations was gradually pushed to the frontiers of modern civilization. In
the 17th century, the Catholic Church established the Congregalio Propaganda Fide, the congregation for
the propagation of faith. This was the origin of propaganda, a means at this time for spreading church
doctrine.

Trends Leading to the Development of Modern Public Relations

The end to the civil war in America and the transition from an agricultural to an industrial society are closely
linked to the march towards modern public relations in the West. The industrial revolution and its attendant
pains redefined the relationships among the governments, businesses and the people. This is often referred
to as the progressive era which ran from the 1890s to the United States entrance into the World War I in
1917. The progressive era witnessed the birth of the mass media and modern public relations as natural
outgrowths of the sweeping social change of that era. Through the use of the ‘new media’ at this time,
organizations were able to communicate with groups essential to their success. We shall examine five social
trends that have aided the development of modern public relations as outlined by Guth and Marsh.

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The Growth of Institutions
The Industrial Revolution brought about the growth of big companies. This in turn led to the emergence of
men who had a large chunk of the nation’s money concentrated in their hands, (like J. P. Morgan, Andrew
Carnegie, and John D. Rockefeller). However, the American system which was never disposed to a money-
in-few-hands economy created laws that would spread this wealth among Americans. As businesses,
government and labor grew, the need for effective communication also increased.
Expansion of Democracy
With the expansion of democracy, as evidenced in such developments as women’s right to vote, and direct
election of U.S Senators, civil rights movements, access of minorities to the political process, etc., there was
the need for effective communication. Due to the increasing importance of persuasion and consensus,
public relations became an integral part of the democratic process.
Technological Improvements in Communication
The revolutionary changes in communication in the 20th century contributed to the growth of public relations.
Commercial radio had debuted in 1920 and commercial television in 1947. Developments in satellite and
computer technology in the second half of the 20th century further revolutionized communications. The
1990s saw the dramatic expansion of the Internet. All of these led to the shifting of communication power
from media companies to individuals.
The Growth of Advocacy
The last two centuries have witnessed a surge in social advocacy. Movements for women’s rights, civil
rights, multinationalism, rights for persons with disabilities, children’s rights, gay rights, etc., have led to an
increasing use of public relations.
The Search for Consensus
The first and second world wars left several mistrusts among nations of the world. With the collapse of
communism and the realization by nations of the need for mutual interdependence, and the emergence of
the global economy, public relations has become a handy means of increasing growth and consensus.

Pioneers of Public Relations

We cannot discuss the growth of public relations at the global level without a mention of persons who have
played prominent roles in its development. We shall look at two important figures in world public relations.
Ivy Ledbetter Lee (1877-1934)
Public relations historians have argued that Lee was the most famous of the early public relations
practitioners. He is often regarded as a major player in birthing modern public relations. This could be due
to the major roles he played in the development of the profession. Lee helped develop many techniques

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and principles that practitioners use today. He believed in open communication with the media and was
forthright and candid in his dealings with the press. Lee was recognized in the early twenties as the first
public relations counsel. He understood that good corporate performance was the basis of good publicity.
He advocated open and honest communication between an organization and its clients. It was his principle
that business had to tell its story honestly, accurately and openly in order to win public confidence and
support.
Two of Lee’s major clients were John D. Rockefeller and the Pennsylvania Railroad. He developed the
publicity policy of ‘the public be informed’, which in his view was essential to good corporate image. Each
time Lee sent a release to the press, he attached a copy of his famous declaration of principles which read
in part “This is not a secret press bureau. All our work is done in the open. We aim to supply news. This is
not an advertising agency; if you think any of our matter properly ought to go to your business office, do not
use it. Our matter is accurate. Further details on any subject treated will be supplied promptly, and any editor
will be assisted most cheerfully in verifying directly any statement of fact. In brief, our plan is, frankly and
openly, on behalf of the business concerns and public institutions, to supply to the press and public of the
United States prompt and accurate information concerning subjects which is of value and interest to the
public to know about.”
At a time when public relations was at its infancy, Lee gave it credibility and ethical standards. Ivy Lee was
however not a saint. Some authors believe that he did always apply the standards of truth and accuracy to
his work. He was also believed to have secretly worked for Hitler.
Edward L. Bernays (1891-1995)
Bernays was an author, educator and public relations pioneer. He coined the famous public relations term
‘public relations counsel’ in his first book by the title ‘Crystallizing Public Opinion’ published in 1923. Bernays
later published two other public relations books propaganda in 1928 and Public Relations in 1952. According
to Bernays, he invented the phrase Public relations counsel because of the negative connotations attached
to such terms as propagandist, publicist and press agent. In his words, “I wanted something broader than
publicity and press agentry. I called what I did ‘publicity direction’, by which I meant directing the actions of
a client to result in desired publicity. A year later, Doris {Bernays’ wife} and I coined the phrase ‘counsel on
public relations’, which we thought described our activity better- giving professional advice to our clients on
their public relationships, regardless of whether such an activity resulted in publicity”.
(Quoted from Edward Bernays’ autobiography ‘Biography of ideas: Memoirs of Public Relations Counsel,
Edward L Bernays, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965. P.228).
Bernays had his downsides too. He is regarded as one person who encouraged smoking by women when
in 1929 he, secretly working for the American Tobacco Company engaged ten carefully chosen women to
walk down Fifth Avenue, smoking cigarettes. The women were advancing feminism while setting the stage
for a surge in smoking. Bernays also helped establish beer as the ‘beverage of moderation’.

MODELS OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

What is a Model?

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At the base of public relations is communication, and communication a dynamic process of sharing ideas
and information. Models are often used as a basis for understanding communication. Before we go too far,
we need to ask ourselves the question ‘what is a model?’ Generally speaking, a model is a representation
of something. It is a small-scale or miniature representation of something that serves as a guide in
constructing the full-scale version of that thing.
A model is a representation of an object, idea or process. It is a simple way of describing a seemingly
complex process or system to enhance a quick understanding of it. According to Berko, Wolvin and Wolvin
(1981), communication models ‘help us to see the components of communication from a perspective that
allows for analysis and … understanding of the complexities of the process.’’
Public relations practice follows a defined process which over time has remained constant in spite of
changes in society, technology and man. This goes to say that whenever you employ the defined processes
of public relations as laid down by its practitioners (baring other situational factors) you would very likely get
the similar results.

The RACE Model

There are several models of public relations. We shall examine a few of them in this unit. Let’s begin with
the classical John Marston’s RACE model which he created in 1963. The acronym RACE stands for:
Research
Action
Communication
Evaluation

According to Marston, any public relations process must follow the above four steps.
Research
Research is the discovery stage of a problem-solving process. As a practitioner of public relations, you
would need research to gather information that would help you take the right decisions. Research would
help you to discover the strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to your clients’ image. You would
also discover the makeup of your clients’ publics as well as their perception of your client.
Action
Blind decision-making in public relations can have unsavory consequences. Information gathered through
research would help you to take appropriate actions.
Communication

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This is the execution stage of the public relations process. Here, practitioners’ direct messages to specific
publics in support of specifies goals. Any communication strategy that is worth its salt is usually twoway in
format; the organization speaks to its publics and equally listens to those publics when they speak.

Evaluation
Evaluation asks the question ‘how effective have our strategies been’? No one public relations approach is
a sure-fire for success. Usually, you adopt one method, evaluate its effectiveness and continue with it if
works right, or overhaul it if it does not. Any public relations process without built-in evaluation mechanisms
would at best be a guess work. You never know what worked, what did not work, and why.

The Hunt- Grunig Models of Public Relations

These models were developed by professors Hunt and James Grunig. The models include:
1. The press agentry/ publicity model
2. The public information model
3. The two– way asymmetrical model
4. The two–way symmetrical model.

1. The Press Agentry / Publicity Model

In this model, the focus of public relations effort is on getting favorable coverage or publicity from
the media. It is a one-way communication with propaganda (one-sided argument) as its purpose.
The model projects an approach that thrives on falsehood, thus accuracy, ethics and truth are not
seen as essential. According to Guth and Marsh (2000), a study in 1989 had revealed that this was
the most practiced model of public relations with P.T. Barnum as one of the prominent figures in the
practice of the model. The model can be depicted as shown below:

2. The Public Information Model

This model equally adopts a one-way approach of dissemination of information. However, unlike the
press agentry/publicity model, it disseminates truthful and accurate information. It is a model in which
the public relations professional acts much like a typical journalist or news reporter ‘in residence’ in
the organization and the information he or she disseminates is relatively objective. Indeed, the

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 purpose of public information here is the dissemination of truthful information. The model was
developed by Ivy Lee, an early expert in public relations. It is depicted below:

Guth and Marsh report that the 1989 study showed that this model was the second most practiced,
but it ranked last in order of preference among practitioners.

3. The Two–Way Asymmetrical Model

The trust of this model is scientific persuasion. It uses research as a way of influencing vital publics
towards the organization’s point of view. The model also attempts to create mutual understanding
between the organization and its publics. Here, the public relations communicator gets feedbacks
from the government and then employs appropriate communication theories to persuade the public
to accept the organization’s point of view. The essence of research here is to reveal how best to
persuade the audience or public. According to Guth and Marsh, the 1989 study showed that it was
the least practiced of the four models but it ranked first in order of preference among practitioners.
It can be shown thus:

4. The Two–Way Symmetrical Model.

In this model, public relations communicators make every attempt for each side to understand the
other’s point of view. The goal here is to achieve mutual understanding albeit in a deeper and more
profound way that puts the two parties in a win-win situation. It is a useful model for conflict resolution
within an organization and especially between an organization and its publics. The public relations
communicator here is a middleman between the organization and its publics striving always at
achieving mutual understanding rather than an adversarial relationship. The model is the most
preferred by Hunt and Grunig who did the 1989 study. They reported that it was the most practiced
model of public relations but ranked second in order of preference among practitioners. Edward
Bernays and most communication educators are major supporters of this model. The model is
depicted below:

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Now which of these models would you adopt for your practice as a public relations practitioner? Well
it depends on a number of factors such as the size of your organization, the distinctive personality
of the organization, its corporate goals and objectives as well as its history and what it has learnt
from it. For instance a university of Kansas study showed that the more experience an organization
has in dealing with crisis, the greater the likelihood that the public relations’ role is closely tied to the
organization’s management. A tabular explanation of the Grunig’s model is presented below:

Adapted from Jim R. Macnamara’s ‘A review of the use of evaluative and formative research’

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PUBLIC RELATIONS MODELS (THE MELVIN SHARPE’S MODEL)

Melvin Sharpe’s Behavioral Theory Model of Public Relations

This model, created by old public relations workhorse Melvin L. Sharpe, attempts to take care of the
defects in the four models of Hunt and Grunig. According to Sharpe, these models do not achieve
all the elements of behavior necessary for effective public relations performance. In other words,
they fail to meet the behavioral criteria for achieving good public relations. Sharpe’s model is
premised on the assumption that certain behavioral actions are necessary for good public relations
as those behaviors lubricate relationships; and that communication is a tool for creating awareness
of those actions.

The analysis of the personal or organizational behavior of what it is that lubricates relationships for
the achievement of long-term stability resulted is what Sharpe calls the ‘five behavioral principles’
necessary for the performance of public relations. The interesting side to these five principles is that
they are relevant not only for public relations purposes in an organization but they are equally
applicable in harmonizing personal relationships with friends, a spouse, or an employer. They are
all about social ethics and by extension organizational ethics. In the same ways in which the
presence or absence of these behaviors harmonizes or disharmonizes interpersonal relationships,
so do they in organizational and public relations situations.

PUBLIC RELATIONS RESEARCH

Public Relations Research

We have earlier on established the fact that all about public relations is about human relations and
that humans are dynamic beings and indeed the society in which they live is ever changing. Thus, it
is one of the major tasks of the public relations man to evolve ways the update of man and the
update of his society. This can only be achieved through a well-articulated research process. Indeed,
the first step in the public relations process is research, why do people, public relations people
downplay research? Can you guess some reasons? Well, let’s see the following common reasons:

• Most times they think they already know what they ought to know about the issue or problem on
hand and as such they will know by and by whether or not they will be successful.
• Lack of time. This is a most unimaginable alibi for not doing research, after all we often say what
is what doing at all is what doing well and no man can be too busy for his priority. We can conclude
that it is not likely to be a problem of time but a lack of appreciation of the place of research in public
relations.
• Lack of personnel: This is one of the many reasons’ organizations give for not doing research in
public relations. But you and I know that good management can ensure availability of relevant hands
to do research in the company.
• Lack of money: Well it all depends on the size of money we are talking about here. Usually, this is
a function of the overall budget for the plan or campaign. But the truth is that not all researches are

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expensive. You can still do research on salient parts of your campaign even if you have to work with
a shoestring budget.
• Lack of how-to knowledge: This is a simple problem to solve. Get a consultant research firm. As
long as it’s a good one, expect dependable results.

Of What Use Is Research Anyway?

Maybe one very good reason you gave as an answer to the SAE above why practitioners avoid
research is because they do not know what use research could be. If this is the case, then you are
absolutely right. This is why we are examining the issue here. The May 1994 edition of the Public
relations Journal outlined six ways in which public relations practitioners can use research at virtually
every stage of the public relations process:

♦ To formulate strategy: Attempting to formulate any policy without adequate research means
using an old approach to solve a new problem. You could also be aping your competition.

♦ To gauge success: All your policies, programmes and campaign cannot be hundred per cent
successful at all times (the truth is except you are a super brat, you can hardly attain hundred per
cent success in public relations). You will therefore require good research to ascertain your degree
of success per time.

♦ To test messages: Very often you’ll need to test the appropriateness of your messages vis-à-vis
the campaign goals and objectives as well as your target audience. This can only be done through
research.

♦ To get publicity: You cannot underestimate how much people who are completely oblivious of
your organization or its programmes and activities until you do some research. Often, you can use
such research as opinion polls to warm up yourself to new audiences and target publics.

♦ To sway opinion: Sometimes you would be amazed at what some of your publics know about
you as against what you think they know about you.

You can only find out through good research and in the process adjust their impressions about you.
You can also use research to preempt a problem or a crisis. As we learnt in a previous unit, crisis
do not just happen, they often give you warning signals. But there are times when the signals may
not give you enough information to help you track or burst the crisis. This is where research comes
in.

Research also helps you to reduce cost by giving you a clear direction to focus your energy on.
Without research, we dissipate energy, we point the water nozzle the wrong direction, prepare the
wrong messages and speak to the wrong persons. With research however, we know where we are
going from the start. Moreover, we won’t go about our duties based on hunches, guesses or surmises
but on solid, empirical facts.

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Data Collection Methods in Public Relations
Research In doing research for public relations, various techniques are open to you. You will
however choose the method that would give you the best results to help you take the most
appropriate decisions. The technique you choose would depend on the nature of the problem you
are researching into, the available resources and the constraints imposed by your social, political
and cultural environments. You would also have to think of your budget, the skill and capabilities of
your research personnel as well how much time you have on your hands.

Developing a Research Strategy

The success of any endeavor depends on knowing how to succeed at it. Knowing how to succeed
depends on developing an appropriate strategy. Same goes for research. In research, you are faced
with two important questions namely; what do I want to know and how will I gather that information
i.e. how will I know what I want to know.

What Do I Want to Know?

When doing public relations research, the nature of what you want to know is determined by the
problem you are attempting to solve by the research. What you need to know falls into any of the
following: client research, stakeholders research, problem-opportunity research and evaluation
research. You could have situations in which you have more than one problem to solve; therefore,
you would need to look at more areas than one.

Client Research
When you do client focused research, you would be interested in the individual client, or company.
You would want to know the size of the organization, the nature of its products or services, its history,
staffing requirements, markets & customs, competition budget, legal environment, reputation and
beliefs about the issue at stake. Indeed, it is the issue at stake that decides what directions to point
your searchlight when you do client research. You may want to also see the organizations
competitions, what advantages do they have over it, what threats do they pose, e t c.

Stakeholder Research
Any organization usually has a wide range of public and constituencies. Stakeholder research helps
you identify those publics that are vital to the success of your organization or client.

Each of your constituency has one form of stake (interest) or the other in your organization. You
must equally realize that each of these publics has its own values, altitudes, concerns, needs and
predispositions which affect their actions or relations on issues related to your organization per time.
Again, this also depends on the issues at stake as most publics would take a position today and
another tomorrow depending on how the issue affects them.

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Problem–Opportunity Research
This kind of research attempts to answer two vital questions: what is the issue, and what stake (if
any) does your organization have in the issue. A problem – opportunity research delves into a
problem vis-à-vis its relationship with or effect on your organization or client. It attempts to ask why
is it necessary or unnecessary for you to act. Now there are ways to handle a problem or an
opportunity, you can be reactive, proactive or do nothing. Indeed, doing nothing would be a good
option in some situations. In essence, problem – opportunity research is useful in helping your
organization or client to decide whether to react as well as how to react.

Evaluation research
An evaluation research sets out procedures for determines the success of a P. R plan from the
beginning. When you mount any kind of campaign, you must equally put proper mechanisms in
place for assessing how well you have achieved your set campaign goals and objectives. To do a
good job of evaluation research, you must know where you are before the campaign and be able to
assess your campaign by campaigning the present with the past.

How Will I Gather Information?

By asking the question ‘How do I gather information?’, we refer to the methods to employ in gathering
required information. As noted earlier, how we would gather information depends largely on the time
and resources at our disposal. Where we have enough of these, we can afford to do detailed
research using scientific research methods designed to create a representative picture of reality.
This kind of research is known as formal research or scientific research. In public relation, formal
research is used to create an accurate portrayal of a stakeholder group. Another kind of research is
the informal research or non-scientific research. Informal research describes some aspects of reality
but does not necessarily develop an accurate picture of the lager reality as a whole. Informal
research can be quite useful in public relations, but it shouldn’t lead us to conclusions about an entire
stakeholder group. We shall now examine both kinds of research beginning with the informal
research.

Informal Research
Ajala, (2001) identified nine informal research methods. According to her, these methods usually are
such that can be adopted with minimal formal settings. They are however very dependable in their
results as they involve personal contacts with the research subjects or respondents. These informal
methods include:

1. Personal contacts: This method involves a one-to-one information souring from reliable
sources. It’s a very reliable method as the respondent is more likely to give you a candid opinion
of a situation. You could employ this method in discovering people’s disposition towards some
policies of your organization. Some of your respondents here could be company staff,
shareholders or members of your host community.
2. Key informants: There are some vital information that you may not be able to source from just
‘personal’ contacts as discussed above. This is another way of saying that all personal contacts

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 are useful in public relations research but some are more useful than others. Among your key
informants would be opinion leaders and experts whom you can consult regularly in specific
situations. These include editors, reporters, labor leaders, civil leaders, etc. Each of these
persons would be handy in supplying worthwhile information in certain areas that are special to
them. The nature of information that you would get from this group is not the same as those you
will get from personal contacts.
3. Community forums: These forums are similar to town meetings that bring elders and opinion
leaders together to solve specific problems or deliberate on specific matters of common interest.
Community forums are veritable avenues for public relations practitioners to gather information
needed to research purposes.
4. Focus Groups: When you wish to ascertain public knowledge, opinions, disposition or behavior
on specific issues, focus groups are usually useful. Although results obtained from focus groups
may not be as representative of any particular public (depending on its composition) yet issues
raised in such groups serve as basis for further research. Focus groups also have the advantage
of providing immediate feedback to the researcher. You could also use focus groups to test the
clarity and fairness of survey questions. They are also relatively less expensive than most other
research methods.
5. Advisory Committee Boards: You could also have standing committees or boards on which
are some influential persons that the issue of your research or investigation concerns. Such
persons could give very worthwhile without feeling that they are being used to achieve some
ends. They could even see it as a privilege to be on such committees or panels and would be
willing to give it their best shot.
6. Ombudsman: The ombudsman is a complaints collection committee or agency. The existence
of an ombudsman often reduces the tension that could lead to crisis as the complaints brought
before it often serves as feedback that could give management an idea of the feelings of some
of its publics. Information obtained through this technique could be used as basis for further
research.
7. Call-in Telephone lines: If you work for any of the oil companies in the oil producing areas in
Nigeria, or you are a consultant to any of them, you could garner lots of information from radio
and television current affairs programmes when such programmes focus on matters that relate
to oil producing companies and the host communities.
8. Mail Analysis: You cannot underestimate the usefulness of mail analysis. Several of the letters
that you receive from your publics could point to a clear direction in their disposition towards your
organization or client. This underscores the importance of good record keeping and topical
indexing of every mail you receive. From all we have seen about public relations publics, no well-
meaning organization would disregard mails from its publics.
9. Media Content Analysis: Some media report about your organization or client could serve as
springboards for research. Therefore, you must keep abreast of the media and their reports about
your organization or client. You can do this by targeting radio or television programmes that may
likely report you or through which some of your publics may air their views about you. You must
also listen to news reports and commentaries. Again, it’s worth the time to go through the papers
and file clippings of reports that relate to your organization or client. These clippings would be
useful when you have to do some formal research.

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Formal Research
Public relations practitioners commonly use five research methods which we shall discuss in a moment.
These methods are: secondary (library) research, feedback research, communication audits, focus groups
and survey research.

Secondary (Library) Research

Secondary research as different from primary research uses materials generated by others (often in primary
research). In primary research, you go to the source of the finding and obtain information form the scratch,
whereas in secondary research, you make use of existing materials. Secondary research sources include:
1. Published materials like newspaper and magazine articles, library references, press clippings, directories
and trade association data, as well as the Internet.
2. Organizational records like annual reports, financial reports and other information that public companies
are required by law to give to the public.
3. Public records generated by governments. Except for information that border on national security, most
government ministries and departments are required to freely give out information to members of the public.
Some of this information could be sourced on the web sites of these government departments.

Feedback Research
Feedback research often helps and organization to receive unsolicited but useful information from
stakeholder’s group’s responses to its actions and policies. These responses can be in the form of letters,
telephone calls and press clippings. Emails at your company’s web site could be a good source of feedback
research.
Communication Audits
When you conduct a communication audit research, you are attempting to determine whether your
organization communication is consistent with its missions and goals. In completing a communication audit,
you review your organization’s communication and records and conduct interviews with key officials.
According to Guth and Marsh (2000), a communication audit would usually answer five questions:
a) What are the organization’s stated goals in relation to its stakeholder groups?
b) What communication activities has the organization used to fulfill those goals
c) What communication activities are working well and are consistent with those goals?
d) Which communication activities are not working well towards the achievement of those goals?
e) Given the findings of this audit, what revisions in goals of communication activities are recommended?

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Focus Groups
Focus groups are an informal research method in which interviewees or moderators meet with groups of
selected individuals to determine their opinion on specific issues. Although focus groups are not very
representative of a particular public, they are useful at indicating a public’s knowledge, opinion,
predisposition, and behavior. Focus groups are useful for generating qualitative rather than quantitative
data. The proponents of focus groups believe it is an excellent way to discover the attitudes of customers,
prospects and other target groups and publics. One benefit of the focus group is that it can directly involve
your publics or audiences. They can even watch the proceedings behind a one-way mirror. As a result, your
findings will have more credibility. Although there are no agreed ideal numbers on how many people should
form a focus group, many moderators hold the view that 8 to 12 persons are just appropriate. It is believed
that id a group is larger than 12, there would be problem with control and it could be difficult to get meaningful
interaction among the participants. If the group is smaller than 8 it could reduce the opportunity for variety
of inputs.
Guth and Marsh give the following ten-point advice on how to conduct a focus group.
1) Develop a list of general questions based upon information needs
2) Select as a moderator someone skilled in interviewing techniques
3) Recruit eight to twelve participants
4) Record the session on audiotape or videotape (or both)
5) Observe the session
6) Limit the discussion to 60- 90 minutes
7) Discuss opinions, problems, and needs -not solutions
8) Transcribe the tape prepare a written report on the session
9) Prepare a written report on the session
10)Remember that focus groups are informal research

Survey Research
Surveys are one of the commonly used research methods in public relations today. Two reasons that may
be adduced for this are that survey gives you first-hand information and it is relatively inexpensive. Surveys
are very useful tools in targeting communications and measuring results. Through computer analysis, survey
research makes it easier to select the right target, use the appropriate message, and communicate through
the most effective channels and measure results.

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The basic idea behind survey methodology is to measure variables by asking people questions and then to
examine relationships among the variables. In most instances, surveys attempt to capture attitude or
patterns of past behavior.
Surveys often use one, or some combination of two, procedure(s): questionnaires; and interviews. A
questionnaire almost always is self-administered, allowing respondents to fill them out themselves. All the
researcher has to do is arrange delivery and collection. You can hardly be guaranteed of a hundred percent
return rate on your distributed questionnaires though. An interview typically occurs whenever a researcher
and respondent are face-to-face or communicating via some technology like telephone or computer.

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