Public relations professionals are good ethical thinkers, study finds

AUSTIN, Texas - Aug. 12, 2009 - Contrary to popular perceptions, public relations practitioners have strong ethics. The industry just appears to be getting a bad rap, according to a new study co-authored by Renita Coleman, assistant professor in The University of Texas at Austin School of Journalism.

The study, "The Moral Development of Public Relations Practitioners: A Comparison with Other Professions and Influences on Higher Quality Ethical Reasoning," was co-authored by Lee Wilkins, professor of journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and appears in the July 2009 Journal of Public Relations Research.

Funded by the Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication at Penn State University, the study is the first to measure empirically the moral development of working public relations professionals. Coleman and Wilkins are both Johnson Legacy Scholars at the Page Center.

"It turns out that public relations professionals are good ethical thinkers," says Coleman. "They show similarity to other professionals with comparable levels of education, such as journalists, nurses and dental students."

Public relations professionals scored better than orthopedic surgeons, business professionals, accounting students and veterinary students.

Coleman and Wilkins took a random sample from O'Dwyer's Directory of Public Relations Firms, which lists the 400 largest public relations firms.

"Although this eliminated very small firms and independent practitioners, the sample included medium-sized firms, public relations departments in advertising agencies and those firms that billed less than $1 million per year. In total, 118 respondents took the written Defining Issues Test (DIT)," says Coleman.

The test posed six ethical dilemmas and asked respondents to rank 12 statements after each dilemma according to how important each was in making a decision. The test measured ethical reasoning in five areas: business concerns, internal motives, truth and respect, religious influences and external influences.

Test scores of the public relations practitioners were compared to the scores of 19 other groups whose members had taken the DIT test in the past. Seminarians and philosophers were the runaway winners on the moral development scale as measured by the test. They were followed by medical students, practicing physicians, journalists, dental students, nurses and public relations professionals.

Last on the moral development scale? Junior high school students, one notch below prison inmates.

"But that’s not surprising because age and education are the best predictors of moral development – the more you have the better you do," says Coleman. "And it shows why middle-schoolers still need their parents’ guidance."

Why are ethics important for PR practitioners?

"Public relations professionals see their role as connecting clients to the larger world, primarily though journalists or to the news media," say Coleman and Wilkins. "To accomplish this function, they need to maintain the trust of both parties, but particularly the trust of journalists who are already skeptical of their institutional role and their individual motives.

"Consequently, honesty and a lack of willingness to deceive those who receive information are critical in effective public relations practice."

The Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication is a research center founded in 2004 at the Pennsylvania State University to study and advance ethics and responsibility in corporate communication and other forms of public communication. The Center annually awards up to $75,000 in small grants to support those making important contributions to the field.

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Contacts:
Renita Coleman
or
Erin Geisler
512-475-8071
or
Scott Willyerd
814-867-1963
Dick Jones Communications