There has been a good deal of attention in recent years on how important it is to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of public relations programs and activities. Dozens of articles, booklets and reports have been published giving advice and counsel on how PR practitioners might more effectively build research, measurement and evaluation tools and techniques into their work. All of these articles and booklets are welcome; any steps calling attention to the need to be accountable for the work we do in public relations have to be applauded.

But it is important to put public relations measurement and evaluation into proper historical perspective. It seems that some in our industry are almost assuming that up until the mid to late 1990s, little of any significance pertaining to PR measurement and evaluation had taken place. That is not at all true.

It needs to be noted that interest in and serious attention to PR measurement and evaluation is a subject that has been widely discussed and carried out going back more than 60 years in time. During that period of time...

• Many PR evaluation studies have been designed and carried out.
• Numerous sophisticated systems have been developed and implemented for clipping and measuring media coverage.
• Most PR practitioners and researchers have come to recognize that there is no one, simplistic, all-purpose tool that can be used to measure PR effectiveness -- that a variety of data collection tools and techniques are needed.
• And a set of minimum standards and criteria for how to measure and evaluate PR effectiveness has already been developed and widely distributed.