Communications research is a field that every successful organization should invest in, if it is interested in the maximization of service production and guaranteeing consumer satisfaction. The claim comes in because it equips an organization to deal with its research questions concerning issues such as usage, branding, advertising, new product introduction, and pricing among others.
Such insight is necessary both for making inter-organizational projections, and in judging consumers’ reactions to the organization’s policy. Therefore, the PR Department has to spend some of the organization’s limited funds to conduct such a research, with hopes of making amends on the image projected by the organization to the public, as well as to fellow personnel.
In terms of objectives, this research will aim at gleaning as much information as possible concerning the effectiveness of three data collection methods; interviewing, questionnaires, and observation, which are most commonly applied by the organization in research. It will also study other available options, their effectiveness, and comparability with the former three in terms of meeting the organization’s demands.
The knowledge drawn from such research will be instrumental in analyzing the organization’s ability to interact with the subjects of its previous, present and future researches. It will also improve the credibility of the organization should its competence, or integrity in the execution of its objectives ever be questioned by external forces.
Finally, it will come up with the best approach of collecting information from subjects while best presenting it as their ally, which in turn will give it credence in the local community, and provide ease with which information can be obtained. Thus, the relationship with its publics will be secured further.
The research topics in need of exploration are outlined below; three topics of study, which this research will propose, and the reasons are outlined alongside each topic. These are:
- Interviewing – as a way of communicating, an interview is only effective where language is not a barrier. This makes previous findings of research thus conducted suspect, as this is a foreign organization with a native language differing from that of the host community.
- Questionnaires – this method requires the respondents to be literate or to understand researchers’ questions in the questionnaires. Again, the community in question is still developing and thus characteristic of rampant illiteracy thus invalidating most of the data presented in questionnaires.
- Observation- this method has proved ineffective especially if the subject of the research is hostile to the researchers, as is the case with our organization’s relationship with the local community. Moreover, there is a high probability of reporting inaccurate findings due to a change in routine by the subjects, which would go unnoticed by the observer, as well as a lack of understanding of the subjects’ actions or behaviors, which the researcher is to report on.
The Relevant communications expert knowledge that supports the argument of the research is that communication is a complex process. Language eases part of the burden, as people are able to package ideas that can be transmitted between different minds.
Therefore, it acts as the channel through which these ideas are transported. When there is a language barrier, little can be done to pass ideas, opinions, beliefs and attitudes therefore preventing any understanding from occurring. Consequently, people who do not understand each other resort to basic human nature, which is lined with suspicion in turn triggering hostility, and the cycle continues.
Ultimately, no progress can be made without finding a way to remove, or go around this barrier. That is the quagmire this organization finds itself in.
Until we are able to resolve this issue, researchers will continue to be misinformed depicting much biasness in the subjects, and therefore their information will continue to be inaccurate. Locals will in urn never accept any policies made by the organization, and we will continue o exist at an impasse.
The proposed planning process for developing the research is as follows: The organization shall enlist the services of other foreign firms that have established a strong foundation with the local community and organize benchmarking sessions with our own personnel.
We shall also engage linguistic professionals to teach our staff the native language, as this will be necessary for the trial researcher within the research to gauge the effectiveness of the new principles learnt. Finally, we shall require he funds proposed by the budget of this research to acquire all the necessary materials to be used in the research.