Final PRR Post

This will be my final post of the semester, and I am saddened by that, but today I will be speak about two of my classmates experimental research blogs. In Greg's blog, he gives a great description of experimental research, and why we need it in the industry. He goes on to speak about how the independent variable may influence the dependent variables, and he relates this to an Oregon hockey team's experiment for gauging fan attendance.  He mentions the fact that there needs to be an experimental group and a control group which  I thought was very important. Greg's Blog is very good, because he actually designed an experiment for the Oregon  Ducks. I enjoyed reading his description, and he created it like the one which was done in class on Experimental Research. He would be doing this by survey. He would do a pretest and post test for one, and then a pretest, experiment exposure, and the post test for another. He  would make it random as possible. He then put information about Oregon sports on each survey. Only one survey gave a little more incentive to go out to the games. He was looking to see if the incentive of a free winter hat would make a difference in the surveys that only had Oregon sports information on it. Overall I thought Greg's blog was great, and fine tuned.

The second blog that I took great interest in, was Meag's Sport blog. Meagan's blog caught my attention because it was based off an extremely famous, and gifted soccer player; Christiano Rinaldo. I actually knew a little bit about this experiment, that Rinaldo was doing, and watched him play during this summer's World Cup.  I thought it was a cool idea how Meagan thought outside the box, and used this as an example of experimental research.  Rinaldo noticed the new ball, being the dependent variable had changed. He experimented  and practiced with this new ball called, " The Jabulani", until he perfected his shots, which he used in his World Cup play. 

Experimental Research

As we talked about this in class, experimental research has many facets to its operation. There tends to be a certain need for control in experiments, certainly so the researchers have something neutral to base their findings off of. In  experimental research, there are hypothesis' which allow for the researchers to make an educated assumption on the outcome of their research before they begin the experiment. During experiments, there may be control groups and experimental groups. the control group does not change, while the experimental group is exposed to whatever it is the researchers are testing. Many times there are dependent and independent variables within an experiment.  The dependent variable is influenced by the independent variable ( which is manipulated, or changed).
In an experiment done with college students at a southern college, researchers studied how students viewed and perceived PR articles compared to news articles. The study was extremely interesting, and certainly made a ton of sense at the end. The Hypothesis, was that students would be more prone to believe a story if it had a multimedia aspect to it. A news article online with pictures, videos, and other links may seem to be more credible to students regardless where it may come from.
I found the independent variables to be interesting, because they manipulated who was reading what kind of articles. Some students may have only been exposed to newspapers with one picture and many words. This may show how students aren't intrigued by newspaper articles compared to other medias.
On the other hand some students were given more than one type of media and the choice to select either online news articles, newspapers, etc...
The hypothesis was correct, in that the students that were observing more than one type of media report, enjoyed the multimedia articles online better, because of the interactive web layout, which allows them to see pictures, videos, and links. All of those things may seem to make a story more credible. 
Credibility, accuracy, and bias were the dependent variable for the students to gauge.
The experiment was done well, and I agree with the outcome of the experiment. If I was given an article to read online with video and other links for a story, and a newspaper, I would probably want to read and be more likely to believe in the online article rather than just a newspaper article story.

Survey Effectiveness

Surveys are a very effective way to reach your audience.  They are fairly easy to construct, and are user friendly. People taking surveys, are given a choice of answers to select, so it is not that complicated for them to actually complete. It is important to know who your audience is, so you don't confuse the audience by using a vocabulary that is too advanced for them.  surveys are effective, because you can reach a broad audience and receive results fairly quickly.  It is important to consider your target audiences characteristics. Characteristics such as level or literacy, language problems, and geographical  issues should all be taken into account while designing a survey for a specific group of people. along with learning about their characteristics, the researcher should also make sure that the anonymity of the respondents are protected. Another factor to be aware of while creating a survey is the respondents personal information. Some things are very touchy to certain people, and they may take offense or decline to answer certain questions because they feel  infringed upon. Things such as personal finances, sexual behaviors, and drug use are things that should be taken into  high consideration before actually being used.

I think everyone has taken a survey before, and personally when I take one, I find some level of fun and interest in them.
I was looking online the other day at some people that create surveys for their website viewers. This website,smart girl used surveys very effectively. Now, the website clearly is a young to middle aged teenage female's website, but they have their niche and were looking for results on favorite music. A simple survey was conducted which got out to 476 people around the world last June.
The survey basically asked these young women about their favorite music, their least favorite music, and how they are incorporated into each girls lives. The statistics were given at the end, which allowed for everyone involved in the survey to view the results of others, along with the public. At the end of the survey, the participants were promised that their personal information, would be kept confidential, which is very important.