More on the Barcelona Declaration of Research Principles
Further to my earlier post, you can read more about the Barcelona Declaration on a special page of the Institute for Public Relations (IPR) website.
The next step is that the principles will be refined based on feedback received during the Summit in Spain and additional input being gathered – you too can give an input, leave a comment here on the IPR page>>
First global standard of PR measurement
Yesterday, here at the AMEC summit, the first global standard of PR measurement, the “Barcelona Declaration of Research Principles” were adopted, as listed here:
Barcelona Declaration of Research Principles
1. Goal setting and measurement are fundamental aspects of any PR programmes.
2. Media measurement requires quantity and quality – clip cuts are generally meaningless.
3. Advertising Value Equivalents (AVEs) do not measure the value of PR and do not inform future activity; they measure the cost of media space.
4. Social media can and should be measured.
5. Measuring outcomes is preferred to measuring media results.
6. Business results can and should be measured where possible.
7. Transparency and replicability are paramount to sound measurement.
Interesting to note that three of the principles mentions media measurement – reflecting the inbalance in the industry towards measuring media coverage. Hopeful ly this obsession with counting clips can be overcome and a move towards measuring outcomes is seen.
At the AMEC summit, the PR Society of America, presented its latest work on PR measurement, as you can see in the slides below. It’s well worth a look as it focuses on metrics for communications outcomes:
Live from the AMEC summit Barcelona
I am currently attending the AMEC Summit on Communication Measurement.
Follow the conference on Twitter: #AMEC10.
I’ll blog further with some updates from the conference…
Researching campaign messages – wrinkles or cancer?
Here is a fascinating study – and story – about message effectiveness of campaigns.
For years, campaigns against excessive use of sunbeds (pictured above) – which are used to tan your skin – have focused their messages on the fact that excessive use can cause skin cancer.
Now a study from Northwestern University (USA) has found that the most persuasive message for young women is not the risk of cancer – but the risk of getting wrinkles.
It is an interesting example of where testing messages on the intended audiences can really help to determine the most effective message for a given group.
Help wanted -5-point Likert or 10-point numerical?
Here’s one for you our readers.
Benchpoint is currently designing a survey for a client. Most of the questions have 5-point Likert scales:
Very satisfied
Satisfied
Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied
Slightly dissatisfied
Very dissatisfied
However the client wishes to have one question with a 10 point numerical scale where 9 is extremely satisfied and 0 is extremely dissatisfied.
We say we should stick to the same scale throughout the survey, and that a 5-point descriptive scale is better that a 10-point numerical scale.
What do our readers think?
Web analytics and communications evaluation
When evaluating a communications project, I often consider the web metrics aspect of the project, if a website played an important part in the project. Web metrics are statistics generated by tools that measure website traffic, such as how many people visited a web page, where did they come from, etc.
Seth Duncan has recently produced for the US-based Institute for PR a very interesting paper on this subject:
The paper focuses on the aspect of referral (e.g. which is the most “efficient” source of traffic for a website) but also contains some intruiging descriptions of advanced statistical methods for web analytics.
Summer 2010 – Professional Development Workshop Series – evaluation and applied research
Claremont Graduate University (California, USA) has announced its Summer 2010 Professional Development Workshop Series on a variety of topics in evaluation and applied research. From August 20-23, you can participate in them directly in California or join them online for interactive webcasts:
Information and Registration>>
Online course – Designing projects to be monitored and evaluated
Here is an interesting online course for those interested in designing projects to be monitored and evaluated:
Results Based Project Design – Live Online
Designing projects to be monitored and evaluated
5 two hour sessions over 5 weeks from 19/06/10 to 16/06/10
This course will enable participants to design a project using stakeholder analysis, problem and objective analysis, the Logical Framework approach, activity planning and budgeting. It will introduce and deepen knowledge of a range of tools used to analyse a situation, design a project, and plan the activities and budget. By the end of the course participants will have gained the skills to design and prepare a project proposal to use in their work.
AEA365: Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, and Rad Resources for Evaluators
The American Evaluation Association have launched in 2010 a new blog AEA365 which aims to publish daily tips and resources for evaluation.
The blog is well worth a read – here is a post I contributed on evaluating communications and the “theory of change”.
intelligent measurement 