11: PR Measurement and Evaluation

We make sense of our world, and our place and purpose within it, by applying measurement and evaluation (M&E) methodologies to the data that drives all that we do in life. Essentially, the metrics that we live by and are guided by are based on collecting and analyzing critical data sets and using this information to make daily processes and systems work in product development, retail activities, banking operations, health care, and education provision.

As public relations practice has increasingly become an integral and vital part of strategic business and management practice for both the public and private sectors, organizations from insurance companies to NGOs, it is also required to justify its role and purpose and highlight its value and impact. While measurement of public relations work has in the past often become an afterthought, a non-consideration, or a hasty, inconclusive effort based on unreliable metrics, the realization of the value of measuring and evaluating campaigns throughout their lifecycle has increasingly become the norm over the past few decades. James Grunig highlighted the need to include and foreground evaluation in all PR efforts, and the PR Excellence theory required evaluation to be embedded into program, functional, organizational, and social levels (Grunig et al., 2002).