Research and Consultation

Why

Research and consultation serve as important ways to develop advocacy and communications approaches. Knowing what citizens think is important because it can indicate how receptive they will be to certain messages. Feedback on a competition authority's competition initiatives and proposed policies is a good way to evaluate activities.

Research and consultation can be used to:

• Learn about awareness and perceptions
  
• Evaluate/measure impact or changes in levels of awareness, knowledge, acceptance, attitudes, relationships or behaviours
  
• Evaluate Web sites
  
• Evaluate services
  
• Define issues of focus
  
• Get feedback on proposed guidelines

How

• Focus groups
  
• Public meetings
  
• Web sites
  
• Polling
  
• Interviews, in person or by telephone
  
• Surveys, in person, by telephone, by mail or electronically
  
• Monitoring and evaluation of media coverage to see which issues are covered the most

Examples of research initiatives:

European Commission's Eurobarometer tool

Office of Fair Trade Competition Act/Consumer Rights Legislation Awareness Survey
[pdf format - 174KB]

Examples of consultation initiatives:

Canadian Competition Bureau's Request for Comment section on Web site

European Commission's samples of Green Papers (setting out a series of policy options) and White Papers (focussing on one particular option)

Note: Some of our documents are provided in an Adobe Acrobat PDF format. A link to the free Adobe Acrobat reader is provided.
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html