Submitted by William Thompson, Division Head
June 14, 2002
Form attached
In addition, the division continued its financial and editorial sponsorship of the Journal of Public Relations Research and our division's refereed monograph, Teaching Public Relations. A complete table of contents for JPRR is contained in item 22 below, and a listing of articles presented in TPR is in item 14a.
The division is justifiably proud of the efforts it has made in going beyond our in-conference programming and publications. An entirely new initiative this year was what we have designated "in-situ research." The in-situ program was stimulated during our Phoenix research forum when members commented on the long delay between when research was conceived, and when it was finally published. They perceived that in the years-long interval fellow researchers lost insights and collaborators that might have informed their own research. To help alleviate this, newsletter editor Susan Gonders agreed to devote a quarterly column to allow researchers to discuss research they were conceptualizing, what division head William Thompson called an op-ed page for research.
The response to the first three in-situ articles has been very rewarding. For instance, Derina Holtzhausen's in-situ article arguing for a new mass media model provoked responses from three European professors, who told Holtzhausen of their research that complemented her model.
The division's other major supplemental research activity this year was its pre-conference research forum, "The Intersection of Research and the Profession in Public Relations." This year's session was devoted to exploring a wide variety of research methodologies; the supporting mechanisms of research, including funding, legal issues and time management; and the interlocking relationships between practitioners and academicians in sustaining the research function.
Pre-conference coordinators Lou Falk, Carolina Acosta-Alzuru and graduate student Cassandra Imfeld Gajkowski developed programming that will involve professors, professionals looking to connect with academic research, and graduate students who are designing their dissertation research. The agenda for the pre-conference is contained in item 21 below.
Hallahan also detected problems concerning individuals submitting multiple entries in single research categories. For instance, one joint faculty-student team submitted three papers, capturing first and third-place in the same category. He has suggested that the division should reserve the right to limit the number of entries each presenter or team the number of presentations in the same category (faculty, joint faculty-student, and student).
Finally, Hallahan noted that the division' research competition received fewer submissions than it did in 2001. Several potential submitters indicated that the time frame of ICA in Seoul may have depressed the number of entries for this conference.
Total Faculty Research Submissions: 38*
Acceptances:
21
Presentation Sessions (3):
16 -- 42%
Scholar-to-Scholar Session: 5 --
13%
Acceptance Rate:
55%
*Includes Joint Faculty-Student Papers (8)
**Joint Faculty-Student Papers are included in faculty total (8 out of 38).
A total of 10 of the 25 paper slots are devoted to student work
Overall acceptance rate for both categories: 25 papers out of 49 submissions -- 51%
Submitted papers were scored using three separate measures: the mean of scores for the 12 items on the standard sheets, the mean scores of ratings (5-point scale) and the rankings (adjusted to a 5-point scale). The three scores, all based on a 5-point scale, were then averaged to compute an index score to determine overall rankings. Papers were combined in a single ranking, and the highest faculty only, joint faculty-student and student-only papers were selected based on their overall rankings.
Kirk Hallahan, Colorado State (Research Papers Competition Chair)
Carolina Acosta-Alzuru, Georgia
Linda Aldoory, Maryland
Bill Adams, Florida International
Lois Boynton, North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Glen Broom, San Diego State
Brigitta Brunner, Northern Iowa
John DeSanto, Central Oklahoma/Oklahoma State-Tulsa
Daradirek Ekachai, Marquette
Louis Falk, Youngstown State
Lisa Fall, Tennessee
Alan Freitag, North Carolina-Charlotte
Joye Gordon, Kansas State
Margarete Hall, Florida
Linda Hon, Florida
Katherine Kinnick, Kennesaw State
Dean Kruckeberg, Northern Iowa
Karen S. Miller, Georgia
Ken Plowman, San Jose State
Shirley Ramsey, Oklahoma
Sandy Rao, Southwest Texas State
Bonnie Riechert, Tennessee
Kathy Rowan, George Mason
Theresa Russell, Millersville
Don W. Stacks, Miami
Andi Stein, Cal State Fullerton
James Terhune, Florida
Laurie J. Wilson, Brigham Young
Total Teaching Submissions: 15
Acceptances:
6
Total Acceptance Rate: 40%
The teaching paper competition was conducted by the division's teaching chair, Daradirek Ekachai. The evaluation instrument was a modification of the AEJMC form. The judges created summary scores, and used the overall ratings and rankings as well to establish a hierarchy of top papers. The four top papers were placed into the presentation session, and the two next-highest ranked papers were slotted into the scholar-to-scholar session. The evaluation form is included at the end of the report.
The judges read five papers each. Their names and affiliations follow:
Bonita Neff, Valparaiso
Chuck Lubbers, Kansas State
Kirk Hallahan, Colorado State
Robert Pritchard, Ball State
Robert Carroll, Southern Indiana
Lisa Fall, U of Tennessee-Knoxville
Susan Gonders, Southeast Missouri State U.
Coy Callison, Texas Tech
Ann Knabe, U of Wisconsin-Whitewater
However, as divisional head, I am particularly pleased with the response to our most innovative program, the in-situ research column. I believe it fills an important gap in our publishing framework. A literature search of journal articles allows us to discover what our colleagues were thinking about two years ago. But it's more difficult to find what people are thinking about researching. That' valuable knowledge, and I feel the in-situ column has helped to speed the flow of important ideas into the conversations, lectures and research of our colleagues.
The division will be primary sponsor of the conference session, "Writing Isn't Everything: Other Skills Needed in PR Education." This session will assemble public relations professionals to enumerate the strategic and analytical skills that are more particular to public relations, and can' be taught in a journalism-based writing curriculum.
A second primary-sponsored panel will discuss the future of integrated marketing communication, and the curricular implications of changing opinions concerning the demarcations between advertising, public relations and marketing.
The division will be the primary sponsor of "Theory Across the Curriculum," a panel that will explore methods for integrating communication theory into public relations survey and methods courses. This culminates four years of programming, during which time the division has presented formative assessments of public relations theory. This panel now transfers many of those discussions into practical classroom skills by assembling several presenters from the earlier sessions so they can share their teaching tips.
The division is a secondary sponsor of "Teaching PR Ethics," which sums up three years of programming into ethics with a practical session on integrating ethics into classroom sessions.
14a. Use of Newsletter The division's newsletter is the vehicle by which our refereed monograph, Teaching Public Relations, is distributed. With Linda Morton's first full year in the editor's position, the division has returned to its three-times-yearly publication schedule. The titles of this yearŐs articles follow:
In addition, the divisional newsletter featured Kirk Hallahan's "In-Situ Research" essay, "A Time-Centered Taxonomy for Campaign Planning," which introduced a new pedagogical model to help students in campaigns courses have a more realistic classroom experience.
In addition to the research presentation, teaching chair Ekachai is preparing a pre-conference session titled "Teaching and Publishing: Getting Them Both Done."
The division's research journal, The Journal of Public Relations Research, also published an article, "Toward an Ethical Framework for Advocacy in Public Relations," that explored the topic for our division's members. This topic of public relations practitioner as the public's advocate within an institution has been a theme of convention programming during each of the past two years.
The PR division is primary sponsor of "Marketing Medicine to the Masses: When Healthcare Promotions Become Medical Advisers." The panel will explore how pharmaceutical companies' public relations activities and advertising dollars intersect with media managersŐ budgets to warp attention to certain medical conditions and transfer health care advice from doctors to advertisements and media placements.
The public relations division was the primary sponsor for another Miami conference panel titled "Communicating about Physical Hazards." It explored issues of risk communication, and how differences in the effectiveness of public relations tactics heightens the perceptions of the danger from certain individual and public safety concerns, even if other hazards might actually threaten public health more and might be more easily remedied.
Our division's PF&R chair, Derina Holtzhausen, along with Rosina Voto, wrote an article dealing with this area, ŇResistance from the Margins: The Postmodern Practitioner as Organizational Activist," which was published in the division's research journal.
Befitting our Miami conference location as the gateway to Latin America, the PR division is the primary sponsor of a panel titled "Segmenting the Spanish-Language Media Market." Co-sponsored with the media management and economics division, the panel will bring together professional and academicians to examine the nuances of Spanish-speaking consumers from disparate areas and cultures so as to plan more sensitive and effective public relations and advertising campaigns.
The division will explore another dimension of this topic during the division's annual luncheon. This year's speaker will be Vivian Pinto Hirsch, Latin America regional president of Edelman Worldwide Public Relations.
The division also devoted itself to this PF&R goal in out-of-conference settings. At the AEJMC Southeast Regional, the PR Division sponsored a panel on "Attracting and Retaining Minorities: a Graduate Student and Faculty Perspective," examining how to increase diversity in the field.
Further, the division's individual members put their money where their convictions were. Twenty-two members of the public relations division contributed to the Inez Kaiser Graduate Student of Color Awards Program, which pays the AEJMC and public relations division dues and conference fees for domestic and international graduate students of color.
Twenty minority students will receive the opportunity to attend the Miami conference and be members of the AEJMC this year as a result of the contributions of our individual members to the Kaiser program. Other divisional members contributed to the Susanne A. Roschwalb Grant for International Study and Research, which awarded a grant to Jae-Hwa Shin of the University of Missouri-Columbia. Her study will conduct in-depth interviews of public relations professionals and journalists in Korea and the United States to identify the conflict management strategies of media relations in different cultures.
The division's journal made an impressive commitment to research in this area with many articles during the past year concentrating on racial, gender and cultural inclusiveness. A partial list follows:
The efforts of national student membership chair Michael Palenchar, a graduate student at the University of Florida, completed these efforts. Palenchar conducted a study of student attendance patterns for the AEJMC conference, which found high participation from larger institutions, but lower attendance from smaller universities. He and 30 graduate students developed an e-mail and phone tree and compiled a list of presidents of graduate student associations in communication departments, and sent them information about the value of AEJMC.
National membership chair Laurie Wilson, former BYU department chair, supplemented this strong push with recruitment letters to department chairs and deans encouraging them to recommend AEJMC membership to their younger faculty members. Florida professor Kathy Fitzpatrick mounted a similar effort to professors at southeastern universities that highlighted the low out-of-pocket cost because of the regional location of this yearŐs conference.
We've extended this idea of value-added membershipÓ to our current members too, by divisional "webster" Kirk Hallahan's efforts to enlarge the membership service elements of our web site. The site, which already contained a outstanding collection of resources for public relations faculty and practitioners, now lists current faculty vacancies. By November, even before the hiring rush had started, 36 schools had posted 38 openings on the site.
We have also tried to make the professors' conference experience more valuable by continuing our division's identification campaign, with PRD stickers issued to our members so individuals can identify fellow members. Following up on our very successful "I'm So Cited" social honoring the division's most productive researchers, the division this year will sponsor a "Yearbook Signing Party" social. With a goal of increasing contact and cohesion among younger and senior scholars, the event will encourage divisional members to get the signatures of PRD panelists at the conference. One of those signatures will be the key for a prize giveaway during the social.
The division has also continued its engagement with major professional groups in our field. We have extended invitations to the pre-conference sessions and our social, to members of the South Florida PRSA chapter and have included them as panel members in the pre-conference programming.
Roger Simpson, Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma
David Handschuh, New York Daily News
Meg Moritz, University of Colorado
Brian Hoey, U.S. Air Force
Carl Juste, The Miami Herald
Robert Pritchard, Ball State University
Thomas Duncan, University of Colorado
Roseanne Riske, Communique Group
Ginette Archinal, Cary Family Healthcare
Rob Doughty, Burger King
Janet Maizner, Edelman Worldwide
John Elsasser, PRSA
Juanita Darling, University of North Carolina
Adriana Grillet, Radio Unica
Daniel Shoer-Roth, El Nuevo Herald
Tom Bivins, University of Oregon
Eileen Dunn, Office Depot, Inc.
Jonathan A. Mayer, Perry Ellis International
Isobel Parke, Jackson Jackson Wagner
Joanna D. Wragg, Wragg & Casas Public Relations Inc.
Vivian Pinto Hirsch, Edelman Worldwide
Ginny Gutierrez, Kresell Maria Travel
Jean Kelly, Ohio Magazine
Jeanne Sullivan, Greater Miami Visitor and Convention Bureau
Panels
Round Tables
Quarterly issues of Public Relations Update, the divisional newsletter.
At the AEJMC Southeast Regional, the PR Division sponsored a panel on "Attracting and Retaining Minorities: a Graduate Student and Faculty Perspective."
Quarterly issues of Journal of Public Relations Research (contents follow)
Volume 14, Number 1
Volume 14, Number 2
The joint efforts of our programming team of vice head Ken Plowman and vice head elect Patricia Curtin; pre-conference coordinator Louis Falk; our graduate student liaisons Carolina Acosta-Alzuru, Cassandra Imfeld Gajkowski and Karyn Ogata Jones; and national student membership chair Michael Palenchar created services that I feel may be appropriate to program each year.
The pre-conference program, "The ABCs of AEJMC," that Acosta-Alzuru, Gajkowski and Jones developed, is intended to help graduate students discover how to maximize the value of their AEJMC membership and their conference attendance with tips on interviewing opportunities, networking possibilities and strategies for learning the maximum information that will be useful for their studies.
Falk added to this value by specifically programming one panel, "Mentoring Graduate Students into a Research Agenda," as well as several round tables that help students learn how to partner with faculty and professional mentors during their research. Falk then programmed multiple roundtables that examine both basic research issues and well as very specific research orientations and mechanical issues in planning research that will be useful to both graduate students and faculty.
Plowman and Curtin then programmed our division's student research paper presentation for the following morning to decrease the financial commitment for financially challenged students who wanted to attend the "ABCs" session.
Then Palenchar and his team at the University of Florida conducted a study to guide the communication plan and collected e-mail and mail distribution lists to promote the forum. Division chair Thompson extended the invitation to the pre-conference program to the Graduate Student Interest Group, and to all other divisions and interest groups in the association through the association's listserv.
While the division will still have to evaluate the attendance at the sessions, the new association members generated by the effort, and the response to the program, we feel it may be an important effort for the Council of Affiliates as a whole to become involved in.
The one unfulfilled goal was Thompson's plan to create a data-base of divisional members' research specialities that would shared with practitioners as a way to encourage joint research and research funding opportunities for our members. However, members of the Institute for Public Relations indicated that this would duplicate an IPR initiative, and so the PRD effort was abandoned.
Incoming head Ken Plowman has listed three goals for the coming year:
Top Student Papers
Refereed Paper Session: Focus: Communication Strategies