A Practioner's Guide to Public Relations Research, Measurement and Evaluation

Chapter 3

Measuring Public Relations Outcomes

Previous chapters alluded to the need for public relations professionals to understand and measure the outcomes they hope to achieve in their campaign programming. This is not a new topic, yet it increased in importance in the last decade of the 20th century as the profession sought to be able to demonstrate effectiveness. Public relations measurement, as noted in Chapter 2, often deals with what academics call “mediating” or “intermediary” variables—things that impact on the final business outcome but are not necessarily financial in nature. Organizational, brand, and product credibility are examples; something that cannot be “seen” but can be measured and verified as a valid and reliable predictor ...