A major current concern in the public relations field is the evaluation and measurement of public relations activity. In order to justify its worth, public relations is under pressure to provide hard data as evidence of its effectiveness. Traditionally, public relations has been regarded as an important but intangible corporate activity. This vagueness is no longer acceptable.

The evaluation debate in public relations has focused on media evaluation. This is because public relations effort is frequently concerned with obtaining media coverage, and press clippings and transcripts/tapes are easily-obtainable evidence of that activity. It is important to bear in mind that media evaluation needs to be kept in context. It actually only examines the process of public relations evaluation, not the result.

Noble Ink has developed an evaluation framework based on these key principles:

• The public relations process comprises multiple steps/stages,
• Every step requires evaluation using different methods,
• Public relations planning and management is a dynamic process,
• Public relations evaluation enhances effectiveness in the future as well as judging the effectiveness of past activities.

Paul Noble and Dr Tom Watson have recently written Evaluating Public Relations: A best practice guide to public relations planning, research and evaluation. It's published by Kogan Page and is available via www.kogan-page.co.uk or www.amazon.co.uk.