Evaluative Research

Evaluative research is a relatively new area of public relations, which provides tools to systematically measure the impact of public relations campaigns and strategies. The foundation of this discipline consists in the belief that the effectiveness of public relations is measurable. However, a question mark still exists concerning whether public relations programs can be monetized through evaluative research. On one hand, scholars who believe that public relations is rooted in social science recommend the use of both quantitative and qualitative evaluative methods. On the other side of the spectrum, marketing-oriented scholars believe that evaluative research should only be comprised of quantitative methods. A review of the development of evaluative research should provide a general understanding of the two approaches that currently exist in evaluative research. In addition, this entry provides an overview of the practitioners’ approach to evaluative research.

Public relations evaluation became a widely discussed topic more than 60 years ago, when the need of a more complex evaluation system emerged. The scholastic literature can be tied back to the measurement of attitudes in the 1920s. After World War II, evaluation studies were mostly U.S.-based and either business or mass communication oriented. Two decades back, Walter K. Lindenmann established a cornerstone in evaluative research when publishing his “Effectiveness Yardstick” study. Trying to overcome the hasty judgments of the era, Lindenmann established three levels of evaluation on a vertical progression: output, outgrowth, and outcome. The outputs represent the basic level of measurement for an organization. At the second level, public relations professionals should possess more complex research skills and knowledge. The outgrowth measures the attention, understanding, and retention of messages. In order to measure these elements, practitioners should use a wide spectrum of research methods, both quantitative and qualitative, such as focus groups, in-depth interviews, and extensive polling. At the last and most sophisticated level, public relations practitioners should have advanced knowledge of research. The outcomes measure the attitude, opinion, and behavior change. To do this, experimental and quasi-experimental observation, participation, audits, data analysis, and before-and-after polling could be used. The scholars that followed Lindenmann emphasized that evaluative research should be entirely tied back to the objectives of the public relations campaign.

The evaluative research in marketing is based on the core belief that public relations programs are economically embedded and their outcome should reflect in the return on investment (ROI) and, eventually, in sales. If following this approach, public relations practitioners would monetize the outcome of their activities by using media metrics and evaluating promotional events. ROI is predominantly used in media relations. One way to account for ROI is by comparing the amount of money invested in a public relations campaign to the outcome, in terms of attitude or behavior [Page 319]change. For example, if a media campaign for a new detergent generated 50,000 impressions and the value of those 50,000 impressions is $1,000,000 that means that one should have invested less than $1,000,000 in order to obtain revenue.

A more controversial marketing-oriented evaluative research consists in advertising value equivalencies (AVEs). Scholars tend to disagree with this approach, but some practitioners are still using AVEs to quantify their public relations efforts. To calculate AVEs, the media coverage is converted to the price of paid advertising within the same media outlet. This value is then multiplied and adjusted according to the number of words or paragraphs, tone, position on the page, and so on.

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