PRINZ Research Policy

PRINZ has developed this policy because it wishes to encourage the use of its resources to support and advance research that contributes to understanding public relations in New Zealand and as a profession, while at the same time protecting PRINZ members from over-surveying and ensuring that quality data result from members’ investment of time and information. In particular PRINZ wishes to ensure that surveys of members are well constructed, do not overlap with each other, clearly provide information that is useful to the profession, and are well analysed and reported on.

1. PRINZ invites external public relations researchers with a justifiable need for access to PRINZ members’ information and expertise to submit proposals for access.

2. The PRINZ research committee will consider all external research requests, and will coordinate any appropriate external research requests for access to PRINZ membership into a streamlined research process.

3. Initial proposals should include a brief (no more than one page) explanation of the purpose and goals of the research and the intended wording of the questions. Strenuous efforts should be made to minimise the number of questions asked (we recommend 2-5 key questions for survey research).

4. Initial proposals will be assessed on their value to the profession and the appropriateness of their construction by the PRINZ research committee, which reserves the right to approve them in part, in full, or not at all, to require modification to wording, to suggest that researchers investigating the same areas collaborate, and to in any other way address the quality and design of the research with applicants to ensure optimum outcomes.

5. Applications must be received by either September 30 or March 30 to be eligible for consideration, and should be submitted well in advance of planned research activity.

6. Applicants will be notified within 4 weeks of the research committee’s decision, and successful applicants will then be required to obtain ethics approval for their research from their home institution (as per PRINZ data-use Memorandum of Understanding) before research can commence. Applicants should NOT apply to their institution regarding ethics for data-gathering from PRINZ members until a response has been received from the PRINZ research committee.

7. In addition to applications to generate new data, PRINZ also welcomes applications to use existing data. All release of any data gathered by PRINZ from its membership to any researcher, irrespective of authorship of questions, will be governed by the conditions of the attached Memorandum of Understanding governing data use.

8. Researchers will usually only be supplied with the specific data relevant to their project, including demographics, unless particular circumstances (such as a successful application for a meta-analysis) apply.