Tyler

Its official week three has come and is now gone and my internship couldn’t be any better. Yes, that’s right I said couldn’t get better! Odd for an internship to receive such rave reviews but yes I am truly enjoying myself! Why you ask….

Well, my internship is right up my alley. I am working with the 2d Infantry Division Public Affairs Office (2ID PAO) For those who don’t have a clue what I am talking about, it is with the United States Army, and best of all 2ID is in South Korea. So my office is on a post called Camp Red Cloud which is located in Uijeongbu, South Korea.

I don’t however live in Uijeongbu, I actually live on another post called Camp Casey where my husband is stationed with the 2nd Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment (Or 2-9 INF(M) the (M) is for mechanized meaning they use Bradley’s) Camp Casey is located in Dongducheon, South Korea and is about 45 minutes away from Camp Red Cloud (CRC) by bus. It probably wouldn’t be such a commute but traffic in South Korea is a nightmare! (But that’s another story) All in all the commute is worth it. I sit back and enjoy the window view of the South Korean countryside two times a day. 

So other than the perk of living in South Korea, the job has been extremely exciting. I started my internship on May 22nd and basically had a nice little introduction to the unit. I am working for a great group of People. The man in Charge is Major Ivey, next up is SFC Trent (SFC = Sergeant First Class), then the American Soldiers in the office are PFC Merfeld (PFC = Private First Class) and SPC Berg (SPC = Specialist).

In addition to the four above mentioned Soldiers, I am also working with five KATUSAs (Korean Augmentation To the United States Army). These guys are really amazing and they were chosen to work with the Public Affairs Office based on their knowledge and ability to read, write and speak English. They not only help in all aspects of the PAO office, they also help all of us get a little culture while we are here. Each day I learn something new from these guys, be it a new word in Korean or a new food or cultural experience. It has been really nice to get to know the country better through the eyes of it’s citizens.

Well, this post has rambled on long enough… next post I will hit some of the highlights of what I have been doing so far…. until then “Annyeonghi kyeseyo” or Goodbye.

Now I am no perfectionist and I will never claim to be one either… I prefer the term Meticulous! I think it suits me! (And before you go looking it up, yes they mean pretty much the same thing one just sounds a little less anal retentive)

With that said I must admit I was a little blindsided by the number of errors that popped into our survey as we began conducting them. I, like most of my group, had made the fatal mistake of assuming (yes we all know what assuming does.. Check out the sixth example) that our survey was pretty much fail proof and ready to be released into the world…. We had written and rewritten, checked and rechecked, pre-tested and retested the survey numerous times. We though we had it down to a science and that our collective “meticulous” qualities had paid off.

So as tiny holes in the survey design began to let water seep through onto our results making them more than a little soggy, we realized maybe it wasn’t as perfect as we thought!

Thus began the list of problems and issues that popped up like weeds in the spring.

1. Questions weren’t as clear as they could have been.
2. Our prepared script didn’t cover all the pre-buttal and rebuttal areas.
3. We didn’t leave an out for people who chose not to answer the income question.
4. We never seemed to have enough supplies (surveys or coupons)

Those are just to name a few. I am sure had I the time I could make a longer more in-depth list. But, I think you get the point all the same.

So how could this happen….issue one arose merely because we failed to think outside the box. For example one of our questions was:

Where do you live?
a. Auburn
b. Valley
c. Columbus
d. Montgomery
e. Alexander City/ Lake Martin
f. Other_____________________

Followed by:

What is your zip code _______________________

Normally this wouldn’t be an issue but when you begin to conduct survey’s on a campus with students from all over the country and the world and you don’t include the words “Right Now” to the above question, you would be amazed at what you get back. People put in everything from Florida to California and everything in between. This would have been fine had we not been trying to determine where they traveled from to shop at the Colonial University Village mall. With these results we looked like we had the most highly shopped mall in the South and that everyone from around the nation made trips to shop here “2-5 times a week.” Obviously this wasn’t going to work, so we are going to have to make some adjustments when getting our final data together.

The second issue was the pre-buttal and rebuttal to respondents questions. Although we had in fact discussed what we would say right up front when giving them the survey as well as what we would say to certain questions… we managed to miss one. We didn’t fully discuss what we would say when we were asked by students to explain the following question:

Your average annual household income is:
a. Below $15,000
b. $15,001 – $30,000
c. $31,000 – $60,000
d. $60,001 – $100,000
e. $100,001 and above

This seemed pretty clear to all of us so we had put much thought into the fact that students would be asking, “Do you mean my parents or my part time job?” Some of us answered, “Just put your parents.” Some of us answered, “If they still give you money guesstimate what they give you and what you make.” and other answers varied from those. Basically we have no means of knowing which people were told what and which incomes are accurate. So now we have another problem to sift through.

That problem led directly into another problem, what about the people that didn’t want to answer this question at all? When we were in the mall we ran into a lot of elderly people that didn’t want to divulge this info. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, we didn’t leave an out for these people. We neglected to include the “Prefer not to Answer” choice for those people who felt it was none of our business regardless of what it was for. Had we decided to throw out the surveys that left this question unanswered we would have lost a staggering amount of surveys, so this will definitely be in our upcoming discussions.

Finally, we continually ran into the issue of limited supplies. On more than one occasion we found ourselves having to cancel planned survey times due to no surveys being available and no incentive coupons for Chick-Fil-A. I realize this sounds like an easy to fix problem… however we were completely dependant on our client to furnish both paper copies of the survey and coupons. (Broke college students can’t afford much … especially not hundreds of copies, plus we had no contact with the manager of Chick-Fil-A in the mall to obtain more coupons.) Unfortunately, our client did not work weekends and we were only able to get so many supplies from her during the week. We quickly went through our supplies and found ourselves empty handed by Friday.

So, much to my chagrin (and that of my fellow team mates) our survey did in fact have holes… some of them bigger than others. Ultimately we learned a lot about trial and error. Hopefully as we begin tabulating our information and breaking it into a written format we will be able to fix the errors and make most of our survey into helpful information for our client… Time will tell.

More often than not as PR students we are asked to write about things in the PR community. Now that doesn’t seem like a difficult task, but we all know how difficult it is to find something blog worthy when your actually looking for it. Most of the time we, as students, run into the problem of the top PR sites requiring monthly or yearly memberships if you want access. This wouldn’t be an issue either except we are all broke college kids who can’t afford monthly, much less yearly, memberships to these sites. So it’s a vicious circle that never ends… until now.

Thanks to Mr. Jack O’Dwyer who has one of the top PR websites “O’Dwyer’s Public Relations News” my fellow students and I have free access to this site as a resource for information. This is an amazing gift and very generous for Mr. O’Dwyer. (Did I mention we are extremely grateful??!!) A normal subscription would cost $25.00 a month, while a yearly subscription goes for $150.00. That isn’t a large sum in the grand scheme of things… (But remember we are all college kids living month to month, so that is a big deal to us!!)

O’Dwyer’s site contains what seems like limitless resources for the PR professional. A mere glance at the Site Map and you immediately see a rather large list of things like Corporate Communications Database, with 5,000 plus companies listed, PR Firms Database (with an additional database just for PR firm rankings), PR Services Database, PR Schools listing, PR Jobs, Media News and the list goes on and on.

I was amazed at the amount of information all bundled up nicely in one site. Needless to say blogging just got much easier!! Thanks to Mr. O’Dwyer, young professional like myself are able to get a heads up on what’s going on around the PR world. It’s more than just opinions posted in blogs (which are extremely helpful, don’t get me wrong) it’s news, companies, endless databases and information that every PR professional should have access to.

All in all I just wanted to send a sincere thank you to Mr. O’Dwyer for helping my fellow students and I have more access to this valuable information! I look forward to spending lots of time surfing the site!

Now normally I am not one who has my feelings hurt to often. I have a knack for letting things role off and not bother me too much… In fact I pride myself in being pretty laid back most of the time… until now.

We finally took our surveys and began conducting them face-to-face. Originally we really thought that we would have a hard time getting students to take the survey on campus and that we would be in need of some serious form of incentive to get them to play along. We never dreamed the mall would be a tough crowd. Men were we wrong.

It turned out students were more than willing to help us out. Some even asked us if they could take the survey (which would have been understandable had we been giving out something free, but the fact is we weren’t… well not on campus anyway) Perhaps they felt sorry for us walking around with several clipboards and tons of pens begging people to help us out. Or in some cases they felt our pain from previous classes… Thank God for those nice people!

The mall, however, was a different story. I thought I was going to have to sell my soul to get people to participate in the surveys. I was shocked to see how quickly people would run in the opposite direction just to stay as far away from us as possible (and that was before they even knew what we were doing…) I mean seriously where is the sense of helping out your fellow man. Hell, we were even giving out free food to these people and no one would bite. Okay a few did but not without a fight!

The responses I received from people when I would approach them in the mall and ask them to help out ranged from polite “no thanks you” to things I cannot repeat. I was in utter shock that people would be so rude in response to me saying, “Excuse me would you mind giving me a minute of your time to take a short survey for Auburn University and the Colonial University Village Mall? We are giving a free Chick-Fil-A sandwich to anyone who participates.” Honestly you would have thought I had spit in their face and called them rude names… needless to say I got a little irritated at the continual rejection. (Yes I am learning to deal with rejection quickly!)

Luckily 286 people at the mall found it in their hearts to take our survey. Unfortunately we were hoping to get 300, but what’s a few lost surveys in the grand scheme. After the few days of continues, hurtful, rejection we decided that maybe 286 could be the new 300 for our group. The nice students at the University provided us with 256 surveys to balance out the difference since we only needed around 200 from that area.

Overall, despite the other than desirable encounters with mall goers I think I handled the rejection well enough. I can’t say I would be really excited to run out and do this type of survey again but perhaps it was more about the learning experience and realizing maybe, just maybe I was as level headed as I thought!

So begins the long awaited count down to my summer internship… finally close enough to graduate and get practical experience in the real world. It’s about time…especially after watching all my fellow classmates go to exciting interviews all last semester! Roughly 43 more days to go and they are quickly passing.

So what will I be doing on my internship you ask… well obviously Public Relations, but in a closer to my chosen field kind of way. I managed to snag an internship with the Army Public Affairs Office on Camp Red Cloud in Uijongbu City, South Korea. How excited am I about an international internship…. Pretty darn excited as you might imagine!! (and can probably tell!)

Anyway, I am not just excited because I get to go to another country for three months; I am excited because of what I am potentially doing for the APAO. According to Major Ivey who will be my onsite supervisor I will be working with the Armed Forces Network, which is the overseas military television station, Stars and Stripes, which is the military newspaper, and various Korean media outlets.

Of course that isn’t all that I’ll be doing but despite the normal press release writing, pitch letters and other expected PR work I think this will be a great opportunity to have some fun! Can we say travel, sightsee, shopping and more shopping. I knew you could!!

Hopefully if all goes well and I can square away some good contacts I will be able to continue on with the Military Public Affairs office either as a civilian contract employee or on Active Duty in the Air Force. Either way the experience is worth it… and did I mention it is in South Korea…maybe I should brush up on my Korean language skills so I can properly order mass amounts of kimchee.

Unfortunately, I don’t know too much about Korea or what to see and do, so any good advice of what to do when I am not at work would be greatly appreciated! Here’s to happy interning!!

Well, we finally finished putting the survey together and having the dreaded review by our clients. Luckily, our efforts to pay attention in class and understand the task at hand has paid off… we received the all clear from our client that our questions and overall proposal were approved. (Of course with a little tweaking needed for clarity, but overall it was well received) Needless to say we all gave a huge sigh of relief that our hard work paid off. On to step two…

Now that the planning is over and the execution must begin. Every time we begin a new phase of this “practical survey experience” I realize it’s never as easy as we think it should be. So now the question of the group is figuring out how to conduct our survey in the most efficient manner that will yield the best results.

We had, of course, drawn up a schedule of times for the group to conduct surveys based on times designated by our client for mall surveys and times we as student’s felt would be most beneficial for surveys on campus. We had around eight total time frames when half of us would be at the mall conducting surveys and half of us would be on campus conducting surveys. (Our group includes 7 people, so basically around three people at each location.)

We were pretty proud of ourselves for getting that many times designated for surveys since as college kids we all juggle the fun of full time classes, extra curricular projects and for many of us full time jobs. As you might imagine finding time to stand around doing face to face survey’s is never easy. Yet somehow we managed to find those few two hour time slots that would work for all of us. We felt pretty confident that we would be able to get some good feedback in these time frames…

This was to be our next mistake because we assumed that this small amount of select times would potentially give us enough completed survey’s to accomplish our task….. Unfortunately, I guess we hadn’t thought through the full process and the fact that many of our surveys will probably be unusable. Robert had some good suggestions for us about how many more surveys would probably need to be conducted in order to get the 300-400 accurate surveys requested by our client. Looks like a lot more planning on our time schedules needs to be accomplished.

The catch is we have only two weeks from the time we receive the printed surveys until we must begin the calculation of our results into a final analysis. Hmmm… I wonder how many surveys we can accomplish in two weeks. We are currently aiming for 600, hoping that at least 400 of those should be valid. So, I am off to schedule more dates with the survey group and pray we accomplish the goal set before us.

As my survey research class progresses and we get more into the meat of our survey project, I am faced with realizing that Survey Research is an important yet difficult task. Okay, I am not saying that it is one of those impossible journeys that requires hours of intense dedication, but it definitely takes some thought.

My group has taken on the Colonial University Mall in Auburn, Alabama for our first survey project. Our main goal is to survey both current mall patrons and Auburn University students. We hope to determine what stores bring in the most business and which ones customers would like to see added in the future. In addition, we are expanding our research to see if we can determine from what distance patrons of the mall travel to shop. Moreover we hope to figure out why college students show such limited interest in the mall.

When my group first set out we had no idea what the mall representative would like us to accomplish. After our first meeting we thought it was pretty cut and dry and we should be able to accomplish it with little trouble….. then came writing and designing the survey.

When we began the process of creating the survey we were forced to set aside our biases we already had as students about the mall. Basically, we had to look at this with fresh eyes so we wouldn’t skew the results. Then we had to figure out what method was going to work to accomplish our task. Obviously, we are going to have to conduct some face to face surveys in the mall to capture that particular audience. We discussed the option of offering free gifts, like a free sandwich from a food court vendor, as an incentive to get people to take the surveys and not avoid us like the plague. We currently feel pretty confident this portion of the survey will be fairly easy… we will know soon!

Secondly we are going to have to figure out the best method to capture survey results from fellow students… enter problem number one. What is the best method to get students to answer any form of a survey? Most students come up with creative methods to “Dodge the Bullet” if they are approached with having to potentially do more work or think about something outside of class. So we put our heads together and we have though about numerous methods such as cornering them on the concourse where a majority of the student body flows between classes. We have discussed sending out mass emails (using a SurveyMonkey template) through campus networks to see if we get any responses, and we even thought about flat out bribery to capture and audience… after all what won’t a college kid do for free stuff… (Or as Robert says, “They will stand in line for water on a stick if it’s free!”)

Once we determined what methods we were going to use, we had to determine what format the survey would take. We, along with the mall representative, agreed that shorter would definitely be better. So immediately we limited our survey to 10-15 questions tops. Our thought was that we could gather the information we needed without requiring busy shoppers or students to spend much time answering our questions.

That led us to the next decision that we should make our survey mostly, if not completely, quantitative. We figured that the majority of people would be more willing to answer the survey, and answer it completely, if they had a few “check the box” survey questions in lieu of alot of open ended questions.

With that in mind we set out to write our questions. We knew the basic questions we needed to ask in order to get the desired information, but figuring out exactly how to write them was another story. We began our question writing process only to go back and forth over exactly how they should be written. We questioned the wording of them and then we questioned the choices and whether or not they were complete and comprehensive.

Long story short, we have put more thought into these few questions than I ever dreamed would be necessary. We continue to tweak the format and the questions. We continue to scheme up new ways to get the survey out and tally results quickly. We continue to wonder if it will all go according to plan…

Time will tell if we are on the right track and how successful our learning curve is. I’m sure the process will change at least once between now and the time we begin, but until then, here’s to jumping in head first!

As college kids we often find ourselves as the immediate target for researchers looking for the most convenient sample of people to survey. In fact we often hear ourselves referred to as the “built in captive audience” on standby for the researcher with a survey to conduct. Now that seems all well and dandy, but I still have my concerns about this form of non-probability sampling.

For example, I think back on all the times that I have been sitting in class and had a twenty plus question survey plopped down in front of me. Or perhaps had one emailed to me with a promise of a free pizza coupon or a chance to win an IPOD. In fact all of those situations have happened to me in the last 2 weeks alone.

The professors don’t really “ask” us to participate, it’s just understood that we will. Most of us are thinking about upcoming tests, homework, parties, our social lives and everything except the survey in front of us. We try to hurry through the questions with our well trained “scan for the main point” reading style, and we circle whatever seems closest to what they want. We really could care less what it’s about, we just understand that we can’t leave until it’s done.

I know this is a terrible attitude, but as researches that is the truth of what we face when we use the convenient sample of students. I am sure I have done this more than once and after reading my fellow classmate Lara’s blog, I see that I am not alone. Because I have done this myself, this is where my concern comes to play….

Prior to my survey research class I would never have known what non-probability sampling or the convenience samples were. According to our book, “Communication Research” by Joann Keyton:

• Non-probability Sampling is the Sampling technique that does not rely on any form of random selection.
• Convenience Sampling is a Sampling technique not based on random selection or probability; the researcher simply selects those who are convenient as respondents; no guarantee that all eligible units have an equal chance of being included in the sample; also referred to as an opportunity sample.

So basically, we are just a bunch of people that get to take surveys because we are the “captive audience.” My question is, when you have a bunch of students who view surveys as more of an obligation for school than something they are interested in how do we know that what they are giving us is really a good representation of what we are trying to learn.

Students breeze through those surveys with complete disregard for the impact that survey might actually have. They don’t take the time to put thought into the answers and often they just circle anything. How, as researchers, does this really help us? I am sure there is the proverbial “Diamond in the Rough” that reads the questions carefully and answers them with some thought, but how do we know which is which?

Granted there are the benefits from performing this type of sampling but I guess I am just more concerned with the quality. Perhaps having been one of those students who didn’t understand the importance of answering truthfully and thoughtfully I know what I am up against. I have to agree with my classmate Lara when she said,

“I think that if I understood the importance of survey research like I do now I would have responded differently. So, maybe before a survey is conducted to students, researchers should emphasize the importance of honesty and answering accurately, because I can’t remember anyone doing that for me and I really do believe I would have behaved differently.”

Than again I guess until we are running the show… we’ll have to be content to keep answering the surveys in class next to people who have other things on their minds.

Recently we were posed the question of how to successfully write a survey question. Seeing as how I had never been tasked with such a challenge I decided to do some research.

Now of course I had a general idea of how questions went, having taken plenty of surveys in the past. (Being part of the convenient student body sample group and all… but that is for another post later!) But I wanted to know more about the guidelines for creating quality questions and designing quality questionnaires.

My friend Google hooked me up with a fairly decent list, but the following were the ones I thought really broke it down.

First I took a look at Statpac and there list of “Survival Statistics.” They made a list of twelve things to look for in creating quality questions. Here’s the list:

1. Evokes the truth. Questions must be non-threatening.
2. Asks for an answer on only one dimension. The purpose of a survey is to find out information. A question that asks for a response on more than one dimension will not provide the information you are seeking.
3. Can accommodate all possible answers. Multiple choice items are the most popular type of survey questions because they are generally the easiest for a respondent to answer and the easiest to analyze. Asking a question that does not accommodate all possible responses can confuse and frustrate the respondent.
4. Has mutually exclusive options. A good question leaves no ambiguity in the mind of the respondent.
5. Produces variability of responses. When a question produces no variability in responses, we are left with considerable uncertainty about why we asked the question and what we learned from the information.
6. Follows comfortably from the previous question. Writing a questionnaire is similar to writing anything else. Transitions between questions should be smooth.
7. Does not presuppose a certain state of affairs. Among the most subtle mistakes in questionnaire design are questions that make an unwarranted assumption.
8. Does not imply a desired answer. The wording of a question is extremely important. We are striving for objectivity in our surveys and, therefore, must be careful not to lead the respondent into giving the answer we would like to receive.
9. Does not use emotionally loaded or vaguely defined words. This is one of the areas overlooked by both beginners and experienced researchers. Quantifying adjectives (e.g., most, least, majority) are frequently used in questions. It is important to understand that these adjectives mean different things to different people.
10. Does not use unfamiliar words or abbreviations. Remember who your audience is and write your questionnaire for them. Do not use uncommon words or compound sentences. Write short sentences. Abbreviations are okay if you are absolutely certain that every single respondent will understand their meanings.
11. Is not dependent on responses to previous questions. Branching in written questionnaires should be avoided.
12. Does not ask the respondent to order or rank a series of more than five items. Questions asking respondents to rank items by importance should be avoided. Although it is by no means a comprehensive list I thought it was a pretty good place to start from.

Second I took a look at Survey Design and their tips for “Questionnaire Design Tips.”

KISS – keep it short and simple. If you present a 20-page questionnaire most potential respondents will give up in horror before even starting. Ask yourself what you will do with the information from each question. If you cannot give yourself a satisfactory answer, leave it out. Avoid the temptation to add a few more questions just because you are doing a questionnaire anyway. If necessary, place your questions into three groups: must know, useful to know and nice to know. Discard the last group, unless the previous two groups are very short.

To me that just sounded like good advice. I know as someone who routinely avoids people giving surveys, I would be much more willing if it were short and sweet.

Finally, I looked over a posting by the “Owl at Purdue” titled “Conducting Primary Research: Creating Good interview and Survey Questions.” This post suggested that you should,

Avoid: Biased Questions. Questions that assume what they ask, double barreled questions, confusing or wordy questions and questions that do not relate to what you want to learn.”

Now again, this posting is not a full list of the best suggestions for creating questions and surveys, but at least it’s a good start for a beginner. So armed with some research and some classroom experience I am off to create my first series of survey questions.

I realize as a student I am somewhat forced to take the classes that are created for my curriculum. Yet, sometimes I wonder if I am learning to do the job that most of us don’t want. (Okay Robert, give me a second to explain!)

Take for example Survey research. Now trust me I understand the vast importance that Survey Research plays in the world of Marketing and Politics (and many other venues as well.) However, I also realize that I am one of those people who hate being bothered with a long survey and I avoid at all cost having to be involved.

Basically, I am on the “Do Not Call List” and I go out of my way to avoid people taking surveys in public locations. In addition I find myself quickly deleting emails that ask me to participate in Surveys and I often glance past them on websites I might be surfing. I am sure I am more on the majority side of this issue than the minority… (I am also sure there are surveys on this issue too… somewhere.)

In fact an article titled, “Results are in: People are tired of taking Surveys” said,

“While there are no hard numbers, survey firms agree that response rates have steadily declined over 20 years, and some say they’ve fallen even faster in the last few.”

Now granted this article was mainly limited to phone surveys, but it only takes a few minutes watching someone try to finagle people into taking surveys in person,to get an idea that they are avoided like the plague.

So what does this mean? Well, I am now diving deep into the pit of survey creation and distribution. I am becoming the person I avoid and all in the name of a degree.(And of course the mass amounts of knowledge I am gaining in the process.) I am tasked with being part of a team that stands in public places and begs people to answer 30 or more questions that may (or may not) have any effect on their future.

So the first question I had to ask myself and my team was how we get the majority of people in our target audience to actually participate and not just find creative ways to avoid us. We came to one conclusion, bribe them.

Yes, as sad as that sounds the thought of incentives seems to be a driving force in the survey world. We all agreed that while most of us would not normally just participate in a survey, we would be more than willing if they offered us something in return (i.e. free food or money for our time.)

The same article mentioned above also addressed this issue when it said,

“Offering money or gift certificates has become more common among several companies for in-person, telephone and online surveys. Some survey firms have tried sending letters in advance of phone calls or visits to prove legitimacy, whereas others, especially easily recognizable firms such as Gallup and Nielsen, will make sure their company names appear on a caller ID.”

Having said all of the above I will say that having been enlightened (Thanks again Robert!) of the importance of surveys, I find myself actually feeling sorry for the people producing them. I know how I avoid them and I am sure others do the same… so now I willing participate in them when offered the chance. After all I hope that when it comes time to perform my survey that some kind person can be bribed into completing the 30 or so questions I have put hours into creating.

So I guess, after boiling it all down, I am forming a love/hate relationship with surveys and I guess we’ll have to wait and see if it turns into more love than hate!