ABSTRACT
Organizations have saved themselves thousands of dollars by conducting research before launching communication campaigns or determining the best way to deal with feedback from publics. Being able to recognize a problem or opportunity and to define it succinctly is one of the most important outcomes of the data analysis portion of the research phase, and no research is complete without it. Applied research, on the other hand, is research that is conducted within a professional field. In the process of planning and managing public relations strategies and campaigns, public relations practitioners are engaged in applied research. In terms of techniques that public relations practitioners might use to gather data during the research phase of developing the PR plan, there are two general categories that the authors need to differentiate between. Secondary research is the term used to describe the process of collecting information from sources where the original data have been accumulated already.
