Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The 1952 edition of Effective Public Relations: Pathway to Public Favor (Cutlip & Center) set the standard for PR education for decades to come. Chapters 5–7 introduced planning as the second of a three-stage process model. The first step was fact-finding, the second planning, and the third communicating. By 1958, the authors had moved evaluation (originally in step one) to step four. In 1963, Marston created the popular acronym RACE (Research, Action, Communication, and Evaluation) to represent the four-stage process conceptualized by Cutlip and Center. As in the earlier model, planning took place at the second stage (→  Public Relations ). Since 1952, three major themes have emerged in the PR planning literature: a growing emphasis on research as the foundation for planning, increasing stress on linking PR plans to business and corporate plans, and growing emphasis on the need to evaluate communication plans (→  Public Relations Evaluation ). Funded by the first Arthur W. Page Society research grant, Broom and Dozier researched and wrote Using Research in Public Relations: Applications to Program Management (1990). Positioning research as the central element in managing PR programs, this book outlines how research helps to define PR problems and conceptualize the program (“before”), monitor the program's progress and make mid-course corrections (“during”), and assess ... log in or subscribe to read full text