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| Issue No. 200510
| October 2005
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The PIOnet Newsletter is sponsored by Newswise and Dick Jones Communications
Feature Editor: Dick Jones Editor/Publisher: Roger Johnson
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PIOnet Newsletter is produced monthly to support media relations' vital role in integrated marketing for your institution. This role is not always adequately recognized, understood, or acknowledged. Our goal is to give you data, arguments, evidence, and ideas to enhance the understanding of and appreciation for media relations at your institution.
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View full list of jobs in higher education.
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Higher Education's Public Relations Problem
by Dick Jones
Dick Jones Communications
One of the biggest problems facing colleges and universities in the United States is the privatizing of higher education. It is a public relations (PR) issue with serious implications, so we ought to think about how to solve it.
Higher education traditionally has been considered a "public good." That is why such institutions are tax-exempt. In recent years, however, a large segment of the public has come to see higher education not as a benefit to the commonweal, but as a "private good," helping only individuals.
In this climate, state legislators across the nation have trimmed with impunity appropriations to public universities. At the University of Colorado, for example, state funding per in-state student has dropped since 2002 from $7,204 to $4,310, according to a recent Associated Press story.
What is less recognized is that the privatization of higher education adversely affects private colleges and universities as well. If higher education is a "private benefit" and not a "public good," then it is a commodity like any other. This view skews the traditional relationship between an academy and its students.
At one time, tuition-payers and colleges had similar expectations of the exchange. The faculty and administration believed that the payment of tuition bought students only the opportunity to take advantage of a great educational experience. By and large, students and their parents agreed with that.
Today, faculty and administration may still hold that view. However, many students and parents believe that with their sizable tuition checks they are buying a commodity -- a private credential that will ensure a good job upon graduation and a wholly positive experience in the meantime. This fuels pressures for grade inflation and costly "arms races" among schools to provide the best amenities. It is the driver behind aggressive negotiation of financial aid packages.
As we transitioned from a manufacturing to a global knowledge/information-based economy, higher education should have increased in stature as a "public good" worth supporting for the economic and strategic health of the nation. Instead, it has fallen to the status of "private benefit" in the eyes of many.
Unless this perception changes, the tax-exempt status of colleges and universities will inevitably be challenged. Unless this perception changes, the quality of higher education offered in our nation is at risk.
Can higher education do anything to turn public perception around? We'd like to hear your suggestions.
We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.
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Comparing Responses and Response Rates of Web and Telephone Surveys
by Zoltan Bedy
State University of New York at Oswego
As discussed in the research review in last month's issue of the PIOnet newsletter, response rates to telephone surveys have been steadily declining over the past several years. That decline, coupled with the increase in computer and Internet use, has prompted organizations to turn to the Web when doing their surveys. It's a move that, to many, seems logical. But, how do the results of telephone surveys compare with those of surveys conducted on the Web?
The research team of Scott Fricker, Mirta Galesic, Roger Tourangeau, and Ting Yan set out to answer some questions about the differences and the similarities in phone and Web surveys. The results of their research is reported in "An Experimental Comparison of Web and Telephone Surveys" (Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 69, No. 3, Fall 2005, pp. 370-92). The study (conducted as part of the Joint Program in Survey Methodology Practicum, University of Maryland, and called the 2003 Practicum Study) drew questions from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Survey of Public Attitudes Toward and Understanding of Science and Technology (SPA). The purpose of the periodically conducted NSF studies is to gain a better understanding of the effects of different data collection modes on responses to surveys and to explore several new measures of scientific knowledge being considered for future NSF surveys.
The 2003 Practicum Study, conducted by Fricker et al., compared phone and Web versions of a questionnaire intended to measure knowledge of basic scientific facts and attitudes toward science. The objective was to compare a Web survey with a telephone survey, "examining the substantive results from the two surveys, the response rates, and various indicators of response quality." Most previous such comparison studies focused on attitude items. The Fricker team examined both attitude and knowledge items.
This study resulted in four main findings. First, although the researchers offered the Web respondents a larger incentive (a total of $40) to participate than they did the telephone respondents (a total of $20), fewer of those assigned to the Web survey completed the questionnaire; almost all who were assigned to the telephone version completed the interview.
Second, the Web survey had less item nonresponse than did the telephone survey. Fricker et al. reason that respondents participating in the Web version were prompted to reply when they left an item blank, while the telephone interviewers accepted "no opinion" (DK) responses without probing the respondents for more.
Third, participants in the Web version of the survey gave less-differentiated answers to batteries of attitude items than did the telephone respondents. One reason for this, the researchers say, is that the Web version of the questionnaire presented these items in a grid format, allowing respondents to make visual connections between and among the items, and thus making their similarities more salient.
Fourth, Web respondents took more time to complete the knowledge items on the survey, especially those presented in the form of open-ended questions, than did their telephone counterparts. It was also found that the Web respondents answered more of the knowledge items correctly.
The researchers organized their analyses around five hypotheses.
- They compared Web users to nonusers. They expected to find the usual differences that make up the "digital divide" (meaning that Web users are younger, less diverse racially, and better educated than Web nonusers). The results were as expected. Additionally, it was found that Web users were more supportive of scientific research, generally reported more positive views about science, and scored better on the science knowledge items.
- Fricker's team expected higher response rates to the telephone survey than to the Web survey. What they got was a telephone survey response rate that was nearly double that of the Web survey rate, in keeping with the results of most previous comparison studies.
- The Web users who completed the questionnaire online got an average of six percent more of the survey's knowledge items correct than did the respondents who completed the survey by telephone. The reason for this, according to Fricker, might be because of the way the surveys are administered, with the telephone survey proceeding at a relatively fast pace compared to the Web survey. Still, the two samples did not seem to differ in their attitudes toward science and technology.
- It was expected that Web users would take more time to complete the questionnaire than would their telephone survey counterparts. The researchers' expectations in this regard were realized. In their discussion they explain that the time difference is probably attributable to the fact that additional time is required for respondents to type in answers to open-ended knowledge questions online than is necessary for telephone respondents to say their answers to the interviewer.
- Web users were far less likely than telephone respondents to leave questionnaire items blank. If a respondent left a field blank, a conformity screen gave the respondent a second chance to enter a response. That option was not available to the telephone survey respondents.
Again we return to the question of "What does this all mean?" As Fricker et al. suggest, the "differences between online and telephone surveys depend in part on the type of questions being compared." Still, despite the relatively slower completion times for the Web survey, Web respondents were more likely than telephone respondents to answer knowledge questions correctly. The researchers' thinking is that the knowledge questions were generally easier to answer when they were presented visually and respondents could give them some thought and provide answers at their own pace.
For public relations practitioners--who need to conduct surveys regularly and/or often--carefully designed Web surveys might yield better responses (although with lower response rates) than telephone surveys. Web surveys are also considered a less costly alternative to either telephone interviews or mail questionnaires. There seems to be no general agreement on which type of survey is better. Each method has advantages; each has disadvantages. Each project needs to be looked at individually in terms of expected quality of responses, response rates, cost, and other factors in order to determine which method of data collection is best for which situation.
We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.
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Meeting Reviews: National Association of Science Writers (NASW) annual meeting
by Roger Johnson
Newswise
This issue will initiate a new feature, Meeting Reviews.
I've just returned from the National Association of Science Writers (NASW) annual meeting in Pittsburgh, and I've invited several members to provide their personal highlights.
This was the first meeting since NASW began, separate from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting, and it represents a real maturing of the organization.
First, this meeting is a fairly friendly mix of journalists and PIOs. This organization has the best sense of community and shared values amongst the members that I have experienced in any setting. There's still a bit of angst and divide, but less than usual.
It's a great networking opportunity. I had my own mini brainstorming sessions with narrative writing guru Jon Franklin, PIO extraordinaire Earle Holland, author and literary prototype Mark Kramer, blogorazzi Amy Gahran, online magazine originator David Salisbury, and American expatriate to the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Mary Parlange, and meetings of the minds with many others.
Here are the highlights from other PIOnet and NASW members:
Marc Kusinitz
Science Communications Director
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
• Any NASW meeting that can whisk you along an intellectual ride from Frank Sinatra to "plagiarized" press releases is a meeting worth remembering.
• My own highlights include the good old-fashioned teaching that occurred in the lectures given by Roy Peter Clark, whose handout, Tools for Writers, included standard rules most folks know, stuff you know that you once knew, and some great new hints. The Five Rs of Creative Non-Fiction, orchestrated by Lee Gutkind, was part history and part hands-on exercise that drummed home the importance of characterization, dialog, details, and action -- stuff that most people think they already know. But here it was presented in a skillful, sometimes challenging way that really made the lessons come alive. And I'm now really interested in trying to find that best piece of non-fiction in Esquire, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold." Other gems included the writer as a manipulator of the reader, and writing through the eyes of people we're writing about: get yourself out of the way to make a connection between the character and the reader. Not a new concept, but the way Gutkind presented this topic made all the difference. I'll remember such key words and phrases as "frame and focus," and regularly alternating "information" with "story" throughout a non-fiction piece. I'm sure Gutkind refreshed the minds of a lot of writers in that room on Sunday.
• The lecture on Uses and Misuses of News Releases was another highlight for me. I brought home a reinvigorated determination to sparkle up press releases with URLs linked to photos and video -- like so many other institutions are apparently doing. This session offered a great impetus to keeping abreast of technology that other places are now taking for granted. The discussion on the issue of reporters putting their own name on your press release and running it as their own story was a real eye-opener. I never thought of that sort of plagiarism until I heard that some PIOs already considered it a problem -- however infrequent -- and a situation that must be dealt with immediately.
• And of course, seeing some old friends and making new ones over meals was another highlight. One old friend even tipped me off to a great article in Chronicles of Higher Education (Oct. 14, 2005 )that noted in one paragraph how public relations outreach to reporters based on articles in peer-reviewed journals leads to increased citations to the original articles, and thereby raises the impact factor of those journals. That's some testament to the role of public relations.
• All in all a great meeting for me. I've missed too many, and now I can see what I've been missing.
John Toon
Research Communications Manager
Georgia Institute of Technology
• For an hour at the recent NASW Science-in-Society meeting, it seemed like the early 1990s again. The workshop, "Blogs and RSS," brought back memories of PIO discussions a dozen years ago on the potential of email -- then mostly an academic-world privilege.
Could RSS (really simple syndication) and blogs change the PIO world like email did? Speakers Amy Gahran, Carl Zimmer, and Joel Shurkin described how they use these not-quite-ready-for-mainstream technologies. Recently, I've noted more and more discussions of Georgia Tech news in the blogosphere. And it seems RSS could bypass email clutter to deliver information subscribers actually want.
Listen to a podcast of this session.
Gail Porter
Group Leader, Communications and Inquiries
National Institute of Standards and Technology
• Mastering the Art and Business of Science Editing: Editors don't get no respect. Everyone wants to write, but no one wants to be edited. What's a hardworking editor to do? Veteran editors from National Geographic, Science News, Popular Science, and the textbook publishing business offered their accumulated wisdom at this session. Some of the pearls from the "art" side of the discussion: avoid cliché:s (all irony intended); preserve the writer's voice; don't try to be the expert; every writer deserves one rewrite, and if the rewrite doesn't cut it, then rewrite it yourself or kill the story; you are the readers' advocate not the writers' or their sources; praise success, and be specific and tactful about failure; time at the beginning with a clear assignment saves revisions at the end; don't forget to encourage writers to "play" with their work. On the business side of things, the panelists described the different types of freelance editors hired by textbook publishers, developmental, copy editors, art editors, proofreaders, etc., and the rough-and-tumble world of freelance magazine editing where "you're going to get the worst stories" that the full-time editors don't want to deal with and "the writers that the editors hate the most."
Mary Parlange
Science Writer
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Switzerland
• Pitch Slam: The first ever pitch slam showed just who in our crowd was brave enough to stand up in front of a roomful of peers and pitch a story for 60 (and ONLY 60) seconds. The panel of magazine editors -- from Popular Science, Discover, Scientific American, and Good Housekeeping -- listened to each pitch and offered constructive criticism. The most common error was a lack of a focused idea -- 60 seconds sure goes by fast.
Here's what the editors were looking for: A strong, clear idea right off the bat; why the idea is important now; why this story belongs in their publication now; and why you are the person who should write this story for them. An email subject header that includes the words "Story Idea" or "Query" will likely be opened over a header with the specific title of your proposed story. Links to your clips in the email are a good idea. They can tell if you are sending out a generic pitch to several magazines -- and it won't help your chances. And make sure you are aware of the last six months' worth of your target magazine's coverage. You will lose credibility (perhaps fatally) if you pitch a story they just ran in the last issue.
Robin Lloyd
Science Publicist
American Museum of Natural History
• Electronic newsletters aren't on the horizon yet at my institution, but the PIO session on that topic broadened my perspective on outreach -- we need to reach out to more of our institutions' scientists to improve communications with them before we can effectively reach out to journalists.
Joann Rodgers
Director, Media Relations
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
• The joint NASW/CASW luncheon was a brilliant idea because it gave the host institution a way to bring out its scientific stars to a broader audience and a way for NASW members to data-dredge for stories and sources. Also a great lot of fun, a good networking opportunity, and a wonderful way to inaugurate and celebrate the new joint venture by NASW and CASW.
Jeff Grabmeier
Assistant Director, Research Communications
Ohio State University
• One of the best parts of this, and all NASW meetings was the chance to see old friends and meet new ones. It's great to share ideas, socialize, and discuss the issues of the day with a community of such intelligent, fun, and warm people.
We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.
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