Chapter 2: Research Methods Used and Methodologies

2.1 Developing an awareness campaign

The goal of the paper is to develop a awareness campaign for an association, that has as principal aim
the development of the idea of ecology and bio food products through people. In order to do this,
statistical survey research survey methods method were used as tools.

The study of campaigns is one of the oldest traditions of communication research, and it has
traditionally focused on linear models of communication and on investigatigating communication
effects.Not surprisingly, campaign research has followed closely the ups-and-downs of alternating
pessimism an optimism of the larger field of mass communication research regarding the strength of
communication effects.(Rogers and Storney, 1979)

Every change begins with a vision and a decision to take action. In my vision a campaign can be a
starting point for a future business idea because when you develop a campaign you gather new
informations, you are the first person that finds out what is missing in a market, what goes wrong,
what is needed more, finally exactly what people want. Being a student at the Faculty of Business
Administration I am interested about everything that can help me to develop my own business and
that’s why I think that awareness campaigns are usefull also for me as a future business women and
also for population because in that way we can reach the perfect equilibrum between supply and
demand on the market and maybe we can pass over the crisis.

Campaigns was also defined in many ways by therorists and practititoners. These definitions differ in
general versus specific objectives through to be associated with a campaign, the duration of a
campaign and its intended effects, the units of analysis and focus of benefits of an awareness
campaign, and the channels of communication that are used.(Everett M.Rogers and J. Douglas
Storney,1976)

Campaigns represent an enormous variety of purposes. They have targeted urban and rural
populations, female and males, adults and children, in Third World as well as industrialized
countries. Campaigns have attempted to influence individuals(political lobbying to influence a
congress member’s vote), small and large social groups(acceptance in a community of a
controversial manufacturing facility), and entire societies(national birth control campaigns).The
effect sought(and effects invariably are sought)range from creating literacy to getting votes, from
preventing drug abuse to advertising cosmetics, from changing nutritional intake to transforming the
social structure.(Charles R.Berger & Steven H.Chaffee,1989)
“A campaign is a preplanned set of communication activities designed by change agents to
achieve certain changes in receiver behavior in a specified period of time.”(Rogers, 1973,p.227)

“A health communication campaign involves convincing individuals to exercise personal

responsibility for their health by altering their lifestyles in more healthful directions, through the use of mass media
and other communication channels to inform the public about dangers, motivate them to reduce risks, or train them
in skills that enable them to adopt more healthful lifestyles.”(McGuire, 1984, p.299)

To summarize a minimal definition of “campaign”would have to state that (1) a campaign intends to
generate specific outcomes or effects (2) in a relatively large number of individuals, (3) usually within a
specific period of time and (4) through an organized set of communication activities.
The objectives and effects of a campaign can be conceptualized along three dimensions (1) the level of
objective, (2) the locus of the behavior change that is sought, and (3) the locus of the benefit derived from
the campaign outcomes (Figure 2.1).

2.1.1 Level of objective

The vast array of possible objectives and outcomes of communication campaign can be arranged along a
continuum that has three main loci: to inform, to persuade, and to mobilize overt behavior change.
Numerous hierarchies of this sort have been proposed including the cognitive/affective/conative hierarchy
of communication effects discussed by Ray (1973)in the context of marketing new commercial product;
McGuire(1968)attention/comprehension/yielding/retention/action model; Fishbein and Ajzen
(1975)belief/attitude/intention behavior model; and the knowledge/persuasion/decision/confirmation
stages of innovation-decision process described by Rogers (1983).Campaigns typically select one level of
objective, the lowest of which is to disseminate information to a target population.Higher-level
objectives, so that an effective bio food-cessation campaign presumably includes components intended to
inform non-bio food consumers about the consequences of their alimentation behavior, to persuade them
that they should discontinue eating non natural, and to mobilize them to stop eating non natural and to
resist starting again.(McAllister,1981,p.91)

Campaigns that intend to inform an audience usually seek to achieve a range of specific effects such as to
increase individual levels of knowledge, to raise awareness of certain consequences, of options, or of
support available, or to increase the salience of idea.

Table 2.1: Dimensions of campaing objectives and effects.

2.1.2 Locus of change

Campaign effects can be sought at any level of analysis from the intrapersonal to the institutional. Often,
individual effects are directly sought in a campaign, but the ultimate locus of intended effect may be
broader in scope, ranging from perceptual changes to changes in structure of a social system. For
example, a communication campaign may intend to motivate individuals to use automobile seat belts
(Robertson, 1974), to discourage smoking by others (Flay, 1985), or to lower the energy consumption in a
nation (Farhar-Pilgrim & Shoemaker, 1981).Of course ,even small changes at a national level require
individual-level changes on a relatively large scale. But the success of a national energy conservation
campaign may well depend on getting people to think of their own behaviors in a larger context of the
national good. In very significant ways communication campaigns must frequently build a bridge
between individual and social levels of objectives, so they provide an ideal opportunity to employ a
multiple-level approach to the study of communication behavior.

Campaigns usually involve individual responses to institutionally generated communication. They

frequently rely on multiple channels of communication including the mass media for disseminating
information, creating awareness, and increasing knowledge on a large scale, as well as interpersonal
channels for forming, changing, and reinforcing attitudes and to mobilize overt behavior on a more
personal scale. Interpersonal communication also helps to ground campaign messages within a social
context meaningful to the individual members of the intended audience. Multiple levels of effects are
sought through multiple channels of communication, including the mass media, small discussion groups,
and the activation of interpersonal networks. The potential for interlevel theory development through
research on communication campaigns is great but largely unrealized. .(Everett M.Rogers and J.
Douglas Storney,1976)

2.1.3 Locus of benefit

One can also locate most campaign efforts along a continuum according to who benefits from effective
campaign messages. Either the receiver or sender of a campaign message (or even a third party) can be
the principal beneficiary. In the case of commercial advertising campaigns, both sender and receiver
might benefit from consumer information that is conveyed. While the consumer may be able to make a
better-informed purchase decision or to save some money, the primary economic benefit of effective
advertising accrues to the advertiser. In contrast, the main beneficiaries of public health campaign effects
are the individual receivers of the health promotion messages. Although work organizations and society
may benefit from a higher general level of public health, it is mainly the individual audience members
who gain benefits, not the health workers who generate and deliver the messages.

Often, persuasion campaigns can benefit sender or receiver, depending on the message. In social
marketing, for example, the emphasis is on a transaction ”whereby something of value is exchanged
among parties” to the communication activities (Kotler, 1972; Rogers & Flora, 1983). Political
campaigns, as another example, usually benefit the candidate who has paid for a promotional
advertisement, but voters can also benefit from their increased knowledge of the candidate’s background
or stand on political issues. A voter registration campaign may be sponsored by a candidate or political
party, or by population group with chronic low turnout, but it presumably benefits the public by virtute of
increased citizen participation in the political process.(Table 2.2)