Jour 3251 Research Journal

The European Communication Monitor created the largest and most comprehensive analysis of communication management and public relations worldwide
with 2,185 participating professionals from 42 countries. The survey touched on worldwide areas such strategic communication, corporate communications, communication management and public relations and employee perceptions of these fields.

The creation of this survey began with an online survey in March 2012 that spanned 4 weeks and was written in English. From the online survey, a more complex questionnaire with 19 sections and 30 questions, based on hypotheses and instruments derived from
previous research and literature, was created. This questionnaire was pre-test with 33 practitioners in 13 European countries. After the pre-test, personal invitations were sent to 30,000+ professionals throughout Europe via e-mail based on a database
provided byEuropean Association of Communication Directors (EACD). Evaluation is based on 2,185 fully completed replies by participants clearly identified as part of the
population (communication professionals in Europe). This demonstrates a good use of copy testing and pre-testing so as to ensure validity, as well as a good use of a master list (probability sampling) so that sample selection was fair and representative of the population.

The main findings were that professionals were most concerned with the ethical issues in their field. Six out of ten communication professionals in Europe reported about ethical challenges in their daily work and that ethical issues are much more relevant now than in former years because of internationalization strategies, compliance rules, and social media practices.

There are other findings highlighted such as perceived challenges in the strategic communication field (such as social media, accessing audiences with limited resources, and difficulties in communication with top management), but ethical issues and concerns were stood out the most to me in the report and YOUTUBE video. They are also issues not nearly as covered in research compared to areas of corporate communication, social media, and business tactics.

Take a look and see what communication professionals feel about their industry!

Print version of study: http://www.zerfass.de/ecm/ECM2012-Results-ChartVersion.pdf