Last Blog of the Semester: 2 Classmates

When we first got this assignment to start a blog all I remember saying to myself, is you’ve got to be kidding me, but at the end of it I am sort of sad that this is our last one because I really enjoyed doing this every week.  This last blog post of the semester is to comment about two of my classmate’s blogs that had to do with experimental research. 

The first person’s blog that I will take a look at would have to be Britney’s.  The main topic of Britney’s blog is media snapshot and last week she talked about Flash Mobs.  When I first saw Flash Mobs as the head of her blog post, I had no clue what she was talking about so I had to read on.  In the blog she gives a definition of what a Flash Mob is but then right under that she says that Oprah has even used a Flash Mob for her 24^th season of her show.  According to Britney, a Flash Mob is when a group of hundreds of thousands of people perform a pointless act for a brief time for really no reason.  Her post explains how the flash mob was originally used as a social network experiment.  The point of the entire thing was to see how many people would partake in this type of thing because people are always looking for new things to do. 

The next person that I would like to comment on is Francesca’s blog which has to do with celebrities and social networking.  I liked this post because I am constantly on facebook and twitter reading and commenting on the things people do.  I know its a little lame but hey, everyone does it even if they say they don’t.  It is so true what Francesca says that public relations people always use social networking and that it is a vital asset to their career because it can get their word out but they can also look up and see what other people are up to in the industry.  The experiment that she found on the web could really help different public relations firms to find out whom and how they want to target specific people and places.      

Experimental Research in the NHL

This week in class we talked about experimental research which is a type of quantitative research.  When conducting an experimental research procedure there are two groups.  One group is the experimental group and the other group is the control group.  Together they are both either asked the same questions or take part in the same experiment except with the experimental group there is normally one thing added to what they have to do or even read.  For example, in class we were given a survey that we answered about investor relations.  After we took that survey we received something that we had to read except we did not know that there were two different pages handed out.  One explanation of investor relations was longer than the other.  In the end the group that had the longer thing to read was the experimental group while the group with the shorter reading was the control group.  Normally the reason for doing this is to see if the same answers are produced through taking the survey again.

Experimental research is often done in the National Hockey League.  For some time now, the rules for hockey have been under research in order to keep the league going and for its survival.  I have written about this topic once before but found other articles about the experiment.  The article mentions how the NHL is probably the most research-friendly amongst all the professional team sports leagues in North America because it wants to make the game more exciting when it comes to the rules of the game.  At the Maple Leaf’s practice facility in August, some of the top junior players were asked to take part in the rule changing experiment.  The experiments consist of changing the amount of people on the ice to a two on two overtime, to a shallower net and lastly to having the second referee view the plays from an off-ice monitor.  The young boys were split up where they played the old way and then the new way.  The article says that instead of making iPad apps like the NFL and the MLB, the NHL is looking to change the game in order to keep the fans and to bring something new to the table.  Towards the end of the article, the Vice-President Brendan Shanahan listens to the scientists when they say that a “negative” outcome could be better than a “positive” outcome because the league will then be able to fix what needs to be fixed. 

As you can see, experimental research helped out the NHL not only with a potential rule change but it also brought the attention of fans to the league.  This was another thing that the researchers were hoping for.  The article also points out, that out of four professional leagues in North America, the NHL is the fourth and they would love to try to make at least a little higher in the rankings.    

Survey's in the NHL

This week’s blog post is about Survey Research.  As we talked about in class, surveys are one of the most popular forms of quantitative research.  The reasons that surveys are most popular is because they are cheap, you can get your responses right away, you  can ask specific questions and receive specific answers and you can also use respondents from any place you want.  When making a questionnaire, you have to make sure you start with general questions and then get into the specific ones.

Surveys are used in every field of Public Relations which made it easy for me to find an article about surveys being done in the NHL.  The Angus Reid Public Opinion company conducted a survey questioning if the Canadians would welcome new NHL team but not with Federal money.  In Vancouver, many Canadians would love to see another hockey team come to their country except they do not think that the federal government should pay to relocate an existing team.  The Angus Reid Public Opinion conducted an online survey with about four questions that had a sample size of 1,009 Canadian adults.   62 percent of the people think that it would be a great idea to bring in another NHL team Winnipeg and a smaller portion of 57 percent think it would be great to bring an NHL team to Quebec City.  Of course it was seen that the Canadians that call themselves “hockey fans” are clearly more supportive of having a new hockey team whether it is in Winnipeg or Quebec City.

The fact that surveys are so easy to conduct, it must make some peoples jobs so much easier especially when they want a fast answer.  Without having survey’s, we probably wouldn’t have some of the answers that we have today unless the researchers did a type of research that was much more time consuming like focus groups or face-to-face interviews.