Having your company or organization sponsor research is one of the oldest PR tricks in the book. And technology has certainly made conducting surveys and polls far easier. Every week the information glut is peppered with press releases announcing research findings in hopes of generating buzz for a brand name, product or social cause.
Which means that you should seriously consider whether your own self-interest research project will be the kind that helps or hurts you:
The good: Research that adds relevant, important new insights to our world and the forces that shape it. | To promote public and government action toward curbing childhood obesity, Kaiser Family Foundation commissioned the largest-ever study of TV food advertising aimed at kids. Among the eye-opening findings – that 'tweeners in particular watch more ads for stuff to eat than any other kind.
The bad: Research that enlightens us with a firm grasp of obvious and mostly useless minutia. | A press release from CareerBuilder.com announced a survey that reveals how “one in ten employees tend to be less productive” when the weather outside is cruddy. That’s right. The startling discovery that some people – not even close to a majority, mind you -- feel a little down when it rains.
The ugly: Research that doesn’t stand up to the light of publicity it wanted to get. | University of Rochester Medical School researchers earned plenty of headlines for concluding that men whose pregnant moms ate lots of beef have lower sperm counts. The American Meat Institute, however, angrily announced that the findings should be viewed with “a giant dose of skepticism” because the entire study involved no more than asking grown men who had already conceived children to ask their moms what they ate decades earlier. “This,” mocked the industry group, “appears to be a health study in search of a health problem.”
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