Qualitative Research for York Hill Students

Qualitative research is used to gain insight into people's attitudes, behaviours, value systems, concerns, motivations, aspirations, culture or lifestyles. These past two weeks we've had assignments on doing different types of qualitative research to see what students on this campus like, such as sports teams and some of their habits, such as which door they use the most when entering the School of Communications. It's small oberservational experienments like these that are able to utalize qualitative research and get results without having to intrude on the people who are being observed.

Another  type of qualitative research that is often used in the industry would be focus groups. I know that recently one of the Public Relations classes had to hold a focus group about the School of Communications. I thought it would be interesting to do a focus group with some current juniors and talk about the new York Hill campus. To get some ideas on how to run this focus group I used the Free Management Library's basis of conducting a focus group. I put together some questions to ask, or bring up in discussion such as what students think of the current shuttle system from York Hill to Mount Carmel, what their thoughts are on the fact that there is currently no staff at the health services at York Hill, and how much they utalize the cafe at Rocky Top. My focus group consisted of ten juniors living at York Hill and provided me with a great deal of feedback. In the aspect of crisis management, these are crisis situations for many students here at York Hill.

Some of the feedback was that the shuttles are too unreliable for them to use. "I have to leave at least a half hour before class to get there on time," one participant commented, and all agreed. The general consensus was that many students drive opposed to taking the shuttle because they know they will get to class on time and it's less of a hassle. In the area of health services, all of the participants were disturbed by the fact that it was not staffed, but wasn't one of their main concerns. One of the participants is a RA and explained how many of his residents have been sent to the hospital because of the lack of nurses up here. This comment did in fact spark the level of concern in the other participants. The last topic, regarding the cafe, through these ten students showed that it is not utalized as much as it should be. Their comments had a lot to do with they were unaware of what the hours are, and theres never a lot of food options when they do go. Hopefully, this will change as the year goes on, but there was a lot of helpful feedback from the participants. Although this was only a group of ten students, there can be other focus groups done to get more opinions on the York Hill campus. I'm sure focus groups like the one I conducted would be benefical to not only other students, like myself being involved in SGA, but also administration for their future campus expansions.

Qualitative research is something that I feel is very necessary to the PR industry to get feedback on people's feelings and attitudes. Quantitative research provides people with numbers to back up these feeings, but what do the numbers really mean if there's no attitudes and feelings described as well? It's the people, in these focus groups, in these observations that help make different methods and theories, and are very much needed in this industry. Even in something as simple as a focus group for getting feedback on York Hill is helpful and is something I'll probably do again.

Classmate's and Facebook...?

I feel that even browsing through my fellow classmate's blogs is a form of unobtrusive research. Through their blogs, even if they deal with issues such as media, fashion, non-profits, how their bligs are set up and what their topics are can tell us a little bit about each individual, therefore qualifiing it as unobtrusive research. Even me currently "facebook stalking" instead of fully trying to concentrate on this blog post is unobtrusive because through all the news feed updates and such I'm learning about people, without them fully knowing it.

Going off of that creepy comment, I found Blaine's blog to be interesting when talking about entertainment and technology in regards to unobtrusive research. She discussed the obsession with blackberries in today's society, and I'm not going to lie I am one of those peple who does have a blackberry, and I do love it. Through some of her findings of observing people with and without blackberries and could see how some of it held true. I like being connected with the outside world with the touch of a button. I like that I can be reached any time of day from really any avenue of media, but on the other hand I can see how absurd it can truly be. Technology is really becoming such a huge part of everyday life, even being seen in the moives like Blaine discussed, how "The Social Network" is the new movie out and it's all about the creation of Facebook and how popular it's become. It's truly amazing to see how fast we are able to connect with people all around the world, with the press of a button. It's also amazing to see how we are able to do so much research through all of these avenues, even to see how we can research the current obsession with technology through unobtrusive research. Just how many times does someone check their blackberry a day? How many times does someone go on Facebook? It's questions like this that can be answered to show how much technology has become a part of our lives.

To further all of Blaine's points, my fellow classmate Katie Warner's blog continued the quest of unobtrusive research through the avenue of Facebook, but looking at an opposite side-the non profit side. Katie stresses the fact that, "Nonprofit corporations are companies funded by donations; they rely heavily on the amount of public's that are attracted to their message in order to remain successful." She has an article in her blog that discusses " of social media, and how it is important to utilize the various media outlets to attract your target audience.  Research done showed that 150 million people in the U.S. have a Facebook page and 39 million people are frequent users who “use social media several times per day” Non-profits can take a huge advantage of Facebook, because it;s a great avenue for unobtrusive research. They can take advantage of this because it's a cheap way of gaining information for any organization in large amounts. All in all, both of these classmate's blogs offered great insight to the areas of social media in unobtrusive research. Facebook, as much of a "college distraction" as it is, is a great outlet for unobtrusive research for all organizations as proved in both my classmate's blogs.

How Unobtrusive Can You bBe?

          When thinking of unobtrusive research, crisis management is not really something that would come to mind as a situation that would require this specific method. Unobtrusive research is a method that doesn't require the subject's knowledge of you researching and studying them. It can either be done in a social setting, or can be as secretive as looking at someones police records. As we've been discussing in class, unobtrusive research can have its pros and its cons, and has a lot to do with the ethics of the situation. On the positive side, it is able to reduce bias in the research situation, and it's very accesible to do and also very cost effective, because usually unobtrusive research requires you to either observe a subject, or gather information that has already been researched for you. The cons that are usually presented include the validity of the researchers findings and the lack of control the researcher has on the experiment.
        The one aspect of unobtrusive research we discussed in class that I could see being put to use in a crisis management situation would be the historical and legal aspect of the method. Through this avenue, the researcher is able to find out information about a subject through legal records, criminal records, online photos, newspapers etc, really anything avaliable to the public. Another way of looking at it is if your company or business is going through a crisis situation, they can be being researched through all of these ways and you wouldn't know it because it is unobtrusive. For example, last year it was such a scandal that "raunchy" pictures of Miley Cyrus  were being shown all over the internet. No one claims to know how those pictures got realeased, and none were truly bad, but they were out there for the public to see. For someone who simply googled Miley Cyrus, those pictures would come up, and that could be considered unobtrusive research on that specific celebrity. Whoever Cyrus' agent or "go-to" person for a crisis situation had to have been all over that scandal, making sure Cyrus was protected throughout the entire process.
      To me, I don't see all unobtrusive research being "unethical" or something we shouldn't partake in as both PR and research professionals. It is a creative way to go about research with getting serious, not skewed results from your participants. Yes, there are lines that should never be crossed ethically, but overall it is a good research method in my eyes. In regards to using this method with a crisis situation, there aren't too many I can think of, except making sure whoever or whatever you are representing you make sure any unobtrusive research being done about them or your company is limited so they are protected at all times and crisises can be avoided.