Evaluation: Bateman 2012
The beginning of Measure What Matters gave me horrible
flashbacks to the 2012 Bateman competition. Four classmates and I competed in
the national PRSSA competition to create a public relations campaign within the
limits of the parameters provided by the national conference.
The 2012
campaign was on youth bullying. We conducted secondary research to help us find
a primary audience to interview for further research. Would our campaign target
bystanders? The bullies? What age group were we aiming toward? These are the
questions we tried to answer.
How does
this relate to Paine’s book? The primary research was where everything fell
apart for us. Through scholarly articles and numerous secondary studies, we
decided our campaign would target high school freshmen with a focus on
bystanders. But our efforts could have been so much more effective if we had
held focus groups before implementation. Because of poor timing and numerous
set backs we were unable to conduct proper, preemptive research. We were unable
to evaluate our plan and alter it for the specific school we were going
to be.
Before
implementation we had the freshmen we were working with take a survey about
bullying in their school. After our activities we had them take another survey.
But we made a detrimental mistake and I’m still embarrassed to say it. We
changed the questions. Their before and after surveys weren’t the same. How
could we expect to measure the impact we had in the school without asking the
same questions. We couldn’t note change, or even lack of change, because we
didn’t ask the same questions.
In the end,
I’m still not sure how effective we were. That is the downfall of forgetting
analysis, the most important part of public relations. Imagine if I was a
businessperson who went into schools and spoke about bullying on a regular
basis. Without regular analysis of the program how could I expect to be as
effective as possible? I couldn’t.
“There is always room for
improvement,” isn’t that what they always say? Well evaluation shows you where
that “room” is, it shows you exactly where you can improve.
As crazy of a Bateman 2012-2013 experience we had, I know we will be able to move forward and score even better with our 2013-2014 campaigns, even though we are on different teams. It's going to be interesting to see how three teams on a very small campus interact with each other during implementation next semester.
ReplyDeleteI feel more confident in my abilities for this year's campaign, since it focuses on a concrete service provided by the Bateman sponsor, instead of a social issue like bullying. We have a great opportunity to put everything we learned last year into action for this campaign (including how to accurately distribute pre- and post-surveys).