The Handbook of Public Sector Communication

26Measuring and Evaluating Audience Awareness, Attitudes, and Response

Glenn O'Neil

Introduction

Measuring and evaluating communication has been a major concern for communication practitioners since the late 1970s onwards (Likely & Watson, 2013). A more recent shift has been recognition of the importance of evaluating outcomes, such as audience awareness, attitudes, and response in addition to outputs such as audience distribution of messages, reach, and exposure. This focus on outcomes has been emphasized by the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) and features as one of the seven principles of its 2010 Barcelona Declaration of Measurement Principles, updated in 2015 to state: “Measuring communication outcomes is recommended versus only measuring outputs” (AMEC, 2015).

Within the public sector, the emphasis on outcomes has been further reinforced in public management reforms from 1980s onwards with their emphasis on “results orientation” (Hood & Peters, 2004). This is concretely seen in the adoption of results‐based management systems across many public organizations, pushing them to move from output to outcome levels in performance management and evaluation (Mayne, 2007). Together with an increased focus on strategic communication that emphasizes a planning process involving communication goals linked to measurable objectives matched to indicators, communication practitioners are finding it more and more necessary to focus on achieving ...