Institute for Public Relations

August 2006 – Multipliers are often used by public relations professionals to factor circulation or audience figures when calculating impressions. Multipliers are generally rationalized by users to take into account pass-along circulation and/or to assign a higher value to PR impressions than advertising impressions due to a perceived higher level of credibility. The authors argue that the facts do not support the use of multipliers, and their use may actually hurt the credibility of the profession.

2006 – This paper outlines and describes the various tools and techniques that public relations practitioners ought to consider when designing and carrying out research projects for public relations planning and for public relations measurement and evaluation purposes.

May 2006 – This paper discusses several different approaches to deriving a Return-on-Investment (ROI) for the support provided by media relations publicity efforts within a marketing campaign. The primary questions discussed in the paper are whether it is possible to show that media publicity helped generate sales or other business outcomes, and can a financial return be attributed to the publicity? In the more than three years since the Dictionary of Public Relations Measurement and Research was first released, it has become one of the most popular papers the Institute for Public Relations has ...

2005 – The premise of the authors is that the media content analysis methods commonly in use fail to address the fundamental information needs of public relations professionals. Currently public relations professionals rely on eight basic methods of content analysis. This paper reviews each of these methods and points out the fundamental flaws in each of these approaches.

The author has designed hundreds of dashboards for communications professionals. This work has involved developing and testing questions that help communications professionals articulate their definitions of excellence. The purpose of this paper is to outline the techniques used to help define priorities as well as to discuss specific examples of how dashboards worked for different organizations, including non-profits, governmental agencies as well as corporations and PR firms.

2001 – You don’t have to spend a fortune or go broke when designing and carrying out public relations research and measurement projects. To save money, consider piggyback studies, secondary analysis, quick-tab polls, internet surveys, or intercept interviews. Mail, fax and e-mail studies are good for some purposes. Or, do your own field research.

October 2000 – The preeminent challenge facing the public relations executive seeking to develop evaluation and measurement systems is gaining acceptance of them from all important parties, starting with the organization head who has to approve the budgets and the staffs who have to develop, execute and then interpret the resulting research.

2001 – The point of measurement and evaluation is to help you make better, more informed decisions. A measurement report should help your business first, enhance your career second, and justify your existence third. If you focus on the first goal – improving your business, you will always get funding for the next research program.  This paper suggests 10 things that some of the country’s best-known companies have done with the help of a measurement program.

2001 – This report is a narrative description of what the best public affairs programs within and beyond the Department of Energy Office of Science are doing to formulate and assess their operations. We focus on appropriate procedures for formative and evaluative research rather than suggesting specific outcomes. Finally, we organize our white paper along the levels suggested by theoretical literature in the field: program, function, organization, and society. The entire report is grounded in the scholarly body of knowledge in public relations and public affairs.

November 1999 – In order to answer the question — “How can PR practitioners begin to pinpoint and document for senior management the overall value of public relations to the organization as a whole?” — different tools and techniques are needed. The authors have found through their research that perceptions regarding an organization”s longer-term relationships with key constituencies can best be measured by focusing on six very precise elements or components of relationships discussed in this paper.