School public relations in crisis situations : the perceptions of newspaper education writers and school PR directors

Abstract

The objectives of the study were to determine whether significant perceptual differences exist among and between public school PR directors and education writers with regard to the actual and ideal use of selected criteria for establishing good press relations in a crisis. Additional objectives were to determine whether significant perceptual differences exist with regard to the actual and ideal use of selected criteria among school PR directors and newspaper education writers with various years of experience in their jobs- among school PR directors representing school districts of various sizes and newspaper education writers working in cities with various levels of population; and among school PR directors and newspaper education writers having various educational levels. Analysis of variance was used to test four null hypotheses, which were formulated from the objectives established for the study. Scheffe tests were performed to determine if significant differences existed between groups Major Findings Public relations directors have room for improvement, by their own admission. The ideal means on the 25 descriptors were all greater than the actual means, indicating that the public relations directors are not adhering to the criteria as closely as the merit. Significant differences were reported between criteria the actual and ideal means on 20 of the 25 descriptors. While public relations directors were not necessarily satisfied with their management of media relations in school crises, the education writers were even more critical. Major differences occurred in the responses of the two groups. The actual means of the education writers were lower than the actual means of the public relations directors on all 25 descriptors. Based on these results, it was recommended that regular meetings be conducted between representatives of educational public relations associations and education writers associations at the chapter level to help each group understand the attitudes, problems and needs of the other.