When dealing with research, you can go one of two ways.  You can either gather quantitative research or qualitative research.  When dealing with quantitative research, the most popular way to conduct this research is through survery.  Unfortunately, this information is not always as in depth as one might like, so the researcher might resort to the different forms of qualitative research.

The most common form of qualitative research is a focus group. This is not only common in PR but also in other markets.   In order to properly conduct a group, one might first invited people who have some relationship to the product or issue at hand.  At this point, everyone is to gather and a facilitator observes and keeps the communication of the group on point.  After further divulging into the topic, other members conducting the research observe the conversation and take note of what's being said.  It is after this group meeting is over that all members of the research team review the information.

This form of research is a great way to gather detailed information from a select amount of people.  They are able to understand how other's truly feel about the topic of discussion and if they do not understand, the researchers have the ability to ask them to elaborate on their response.  This allows for great content to be discovered. 

On the negative side though, this information is only obtained from a small amount of people.  A focus group should be small and intimate, therefore, the amount of people being interviewed is quite small.  With quantitative information, researchers gather a large amount of information that can be compared and usually result in statistical information.  With qualitative research, it is a great amount of detailed information from a small amount of people.

At the end of the day, the type of research method used all depends on the type of information you want to learn.