Evaluating Public Relations, 3rd Edition

03

The history and culture of PR measurement and evaluation

There has long been a considerable gap between the academic desire for a social science-based approach to public relations evaluation and the informal, ‘seat of the pants’ methods used by the vast majority of practitioners. The culture of public relations practitioners is a fundamental issue when considering attitudes towards evaluation and the methodology used. In textbooks and articles about public relations, writers and academics are almost unanimous in their advice that programmes must be researched during preparation and evaluated during and after implementation. Many researchers, however, have found that a minority of practitioners used scientific evaluation methods.

Although ...