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Chapter 3 Methodology
This chapter introduces the research methodology used for this study and how it has guided data collection and analysis. First, five research questions are introduced. The following sections describe the data collection phase for this study, which consisted of in-depth interviews.
3. 1 Aim of the study and research questions
The aim of the study is to monitor how People in Need uses public relations in order to support their organizational goals. The research covers the communication channels and the strategies used by People in Need to communicate with the public, the ways NPO access the media relations and the reflection of the cooperation between journalists and NPO representatives.
This study aims to answer the following main research questions:
RQ1: What is the level of importance of media relations for PIN?
RQ2: What is the level of cooperating between journalists and PIN representatives?
RQ3: How does mass media impacts PIN’s public relations?
RQ4: Through which channels PIN practices media relations?
RQ5: What are the goals of NIP’s communication strategy?
3. 2. The research method
The intention of this empirical paper is to cover the concrete and detailed opinions of
representatives of selected non-profit organization on the public relations and media relations.
For this reason their evaluation will be most effectively conducted through a qualitative, rather than the quantitative level. Therefore, this empirical paper will be base on qualitative data retrieved using methodology of semi structured in-depth interviews. Under this criterion the
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1) Selection of the methodology: semi structured in-depth interviews 2) Prepare the interview questions
3) Conduct the interviews with the selected subjects through the best tool available 4) Create a transcript of the interviews
5) Analyze the material
6) Answer the research questions through the findings
To have a better understanding why semi-structured in-depth interviews is the most suitable methodology for the current research, lets proceed with the explanation.
Semi structured in-depth interviews
These types of interviews are generally organized around a set of predetermined open-ended questions, with other questions emerging from the dialogue between interviewer and
interviewee(s) (Rubin, 2005). Semi-structured in-depth interviews are the most widely used interviewing format for qualitative research and can occur either with an individual or in groups.
According to Chilban (1996), the individual in-depth interview allows the interviewer to delve deeply into social and personal matters, whereas the group interview allows inter-viewers to get a wider range of experience but, because of the public nature of the process, prevents delving as deeply into the individual perspective.
Conducting interviews in person was not possible due to limited budget of the study. In order to substitute the personal contact, the communication from gram Skype25 was utilized for the interviews. The advantages and disadvantages of using Skype for conducting interviews are listed in Table 2.
25 Skype has over past 10 years since its launch become a popular communication tool around the world25. There was 300 million active users in 2013. Low software demands and also low costs (the basic features are free) are one of the main reasons why it is also adopted by researchers.
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Table 2 Advantages and disadvantages of the use of technology for conduction interviews Advantages: Disadvantages:
1. Conference + chat tools freely available
2. Satisfactory audio, video and chat 3. Adding callers to conference easy
1. Video use slowed down proceedings
2. Quality patchy when too many worldwide participants on the Skype network
3. Problems with microphone and/or headset
4. Speed dependent on how many callers were on worldwide / bandwidth
5. Accommodating time zones + daylight savings Source: Pretto and Pocknee (2008)
One of the limitations of utilizing Skype technology in the research is absence of direct face-to-face contact with the interviewees. Skype can be rather tedious compared with telephone interviews. Nevertheless, there are researchers suggesting (Sturges & Hanrahan, 2004) that there are no significant differences between face-to-face and telephone interviews.
Taking in account the above-mentioned points, including the obstacles connected with the use of Skype for research purposes, the author of the text still considers this communication program as suitable for the purposes of this study.
Respondents of the study
NGO People in Need has a total of 753 employees. 62% of them are abroad on missions and 38
% of them are present in Czech Republic. Respondents were selected based on the function they are charged with within the organization. As the main topic of the paper is public relations, two of the respondents are involved in public relations of the NPO. In order to learn about public relations in context of overall functioning of the NPO, two other respondents are from departments other than the public relations department: One is head of fundraising and another is NPO of People in Need who is also a founder of the organization. Since the study aims to provide a comprehensive view on public relations of NPOs, where an important role belongs to
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media relations, one further interview with a journalist who covers the non-profit topic in the media was conducted.
In total five interviews were conducted for the purposes of this study. Four respondents are employees of People in Need and they work in PIN’s headquarters in Prague. The fifth respondent is a journalist employed by Czech radio who had been covering topics on People in Need.
The following section includes characteristic of each respondent in regards of his or her working position, motivation to work for People in Need, education and age.
Tereza Hronova (Mrs.)
Tereza Hronova is media coordinator within the Relief and Development section. She has been working in People in Need for four years. She decided to work in PIN as she considered it an interesting job which involves some journalistic work where she gets the space to write her own texts. Ms. Hronova has gained master’s degree in Journalism and Social work. Currently, she is in the fourth year of her doctor studies. She is 28 years old.
Simon Panek (Mr.)
Simon Panek is CEO of People in Need. He has been involved in the runnning of the organization since its beginning. As student leader of the Velvet revolution in 1989, he become one of the first personalities of the new emerging nonprofit sector in Czech Republic. His motivation was to help Armenia and other countries suffering from various conflicts. Mr. Panek has completed secondary school and he is 46 years old.
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Tomas Urban is the Head of Media department and has 7 years’ experience working in People in Need. He decided to work for PIN based on the good reputation of the NGO and also because he wanted to learn new things and was interested in gaining additional sources of information about what is going on around the world. Mr. Urban attained his master’s degree in Religion and Theology. He is 36 years old.
Tomas Vyhnalek (Mr.)
Mr. Vyhnalek is the head of the fundraising section. He has been working in PIN since 1996 and he started to lead the fundraising section 7 years ago. He started to work in PIN as he wanted to change the world and protect it. Also, he likes the job. Mr. Vyhnalek has gained his master’s degree in Regional Territory Studies and he is 40 years old.
Zuzana Rejchova (Mrs.)
Mrs. Rejchova is a journalist for Czech radio. She worked for the station Radio Wave from 2006 to 2014 and now she is an employee at a station called Radiojournal. During her work for Radio Wave, she focused on the topic of the nonprofit sector. She anchored a program called Crossings that focused on migrants in Czech Republic. The project was in cooperation with (People in).
Mrs. Rejchova gained her bachelor’s degree in Humanism and is 34 years old.
Data collection procedures
The respondents of the study where approached via email communication, all of them agreed to participate in the study. The interviews were conducted in the spring of 2014. Initially, the interviews were planned for the second week in April, but two respondents were unavailable for that as they were traveling abroad. The interview with Tereza Hronova therefore took place two weeks earlier, and the interview with Zuzana Rejchova took place one month later.
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The interviews were conducted via the communication program Skype. The respondents were asked a series of open-ended questions. The structure of the interview (see in appendix) covered activities of each respondent in relation to public relations and media relations. The respondents who worked with the NPO were asked about the role of media in relations of their organization and also their opinions on PR. The respondent who does not work for the NPO – the journalist – was mainly asked about cooperation with various NPOs and media coverage. Most interviews took about one hour (with the exception of the interview with Head of Media department that lasted two hours). Interviews were recorded and transcribed for later reference.
The researcher encountered minor technical difficulties when conducting interviews via Skype. The obstacle was the low speed of the Internet, which had an impact on quality of the audio and the video. The most technical difficulties were encountered during the call with CEO Simon Panek who was staying in Ukraine as the sound quality lowered significantly several times and the interview, nevertheless, thanks to the willingness of interviewees to repeat the answers it was possible to transmit most of the information. During this and the other two interviews, the researcher decided to stop using the video camera as it lowered the quality of the sound to the crucial level and therefore only the audio was used in the interview.
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