Background
Public relations (PR) is one of the marketing communications disciplines, best thought of as an arsenal of weapons employed to induce adoption of an advocacy position, trial or purchase of a product or service, and assent to a given line of thinking. PR is more subtle and less visible than, say, mass media or Internet advertising because the tools of the craft typically comprise press releases or behind-the-scenes persuasion to obtain more favorable editorial treatment or for an organization to declare itself behind the espoused initiative.
Part of the image problem of PR is “spin” management, a term that has taken on pejorative connotations as American media routinely accuse politicians of seeking to put adverse developments – such as setbacks in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan – in a favorable light in order to cultivate support of the electorate. And it is true enough that political leaders have lied to the American people when they mistakenly thought they could get away with it. However, it is also true that many erstwhile respectable media outlets (the New York Times, for example) are often clumsy about concealing their liberal and anti-government bias.
As an associate professor in the Department of Advertising/Public Relations, Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia, Lynne M. Sallot undertook to explore the antecedents of the comparatively poor image PR agencies and consultants have with target publics.
Aims of the Study
Sallot took for her theoretical framework the principles of impression management and employed an experimental research design to test the effects of three aspects of PR practice:
- the presumptive motives behind a public relations program,
- communication styles used,
- observed professionalism of practitioners.
By definition, “impression management” is the usually conscious and goal-directed process that endeavors to influence the perceptions of a target public about a person, object or event by regulating the information that is released or conveyed.
Methodology
The validity of this research rests on the fact that, first of all, the experimental method has been used to examine the goals and behaviors of impression managers in most interpersonal, social, and organizational communication/ psychology studies that deal with the matter. In particular, Sallot falls back on the experimental design used by Schenker and Leary to probe varied impression management effects exemplified by audience response to actors in a different scenarios.
Secondly, Sallot quotes Benoit, Caillouet, Coombs and others to contend that the impression management perspective leads to better understanding of public relations, since both are concerned with the “strategic control of information to communicate particular, desired impressions to identified audiences.”
Thirdly, the author argues for the validity of the three explanatory and independent) variables in that:
- Audiences impute self-interest or mixed motives at best for any act of communication.
- On communication styles used, it is opined that the interactive, symmetrical methods of PR – in the course of which feedback is systematically and regularly sought from the target audience via polling – have worked to the extent at least of elevating the professional status of PR.
- Professionalism seems a strong factor in bolstering reputation, particularly as applied to either state licensing or voluntary accreditation, in the case of PR consultants.
In turn, the reliability of the Sallot study rests on employing random sampling that allows the findings to be generalized to the relevant general population and on a research design that permits other researchers to replicate the findings given the same method and study instruments.
The research design was a rigorous 4x2x2 factorial design with 16 distinct experimental conditions across which the test subjects were distributed. This design broke down as follows:
Sallot also hypothesized interactive effects among the above but these are beyond the scope of the present critique.
The other aspects of reliability concern sample size, sampling method and the study instruments. In general, these all serve to enhance the standing of the Sallot study.
For instance, sample size was substantial (net= 585) and had to be owing to the fact that the research design bore 16 treatment cells (combinations of independent variables) over which respondents needed to be randomly distributed. There was definitely no question about acquiring a sample size >30 to permit parametric statistics such as ANOVA.
The respondents were about evenly divided between 291 recruited in the mall intercept and 294 university undergraduates enrolled in an undergraduate speech course. The main exclusions were 38 for incomplete questionnaires, and participants working or studying in public relations, print or broadcast journalism, or advertising. Over two-thirds had completed some college but this has to be considered in light of the reliance on a large number of student-respondents.
The “intervention” or experimental manipulation took the form of simulated news articles from an area newspaper and an attached briefing sheet. Both items differed according to imputed motives about the altruism (or, conversely, selfish motives) of a fictitious company with respect to starting up a laser cartridge recycling facility in the community. The licensing independent variable condition took the form of identifying a PR firm Hanson as behind the materials and being among just 5% of licensed practitioners in the state.
Respondents were randomly assigned to each of 16 test conditions, arising from the fact that there were four different newspaper articles and four different backgrounders (4 x 4) thus yielding 16 different questionnaire versions used in the experiment.
The dependent variables in this study were the responses to the questionnaires. Semantic differential items and “strongly agree-strongly disagree” scales measured attitudes about the IV’s, eight Likert-type scales provided manipulation checks while a tack-on of 11 items assessed attitudes about PR. The latter were presented twice, once before exposure to the stimuli and subsequently so as to provide a baseline measure of where attitudes stood before the experimental manipulation.
References
Benoit, W. L. (1995) Accounts, excuses, and apologies: A theory of image restoration strategies. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Caillouet R. H. & Allen, M. W. (1996) Impression management strategies employees use when discussing their organization’s public image. Journal of Public Relations Research 8 (4): 211-27.
Coombs, W. T. (2001) Interpersonal communication and public relations. in Handbook of Public Relations, ed. Robert L. Heath, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 105-114.
Sallot, L. M. (2008). What the public thinks about public relations: An impression management experiment. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 2002; 79, 1; p. 150.