Bournemouth University's Dr. Tom Watson has posted the final report on the Study of the Priorities for Public Relations Research (PR Priorities Study - final report). The initial piloting was initiated on Dr. Watson's DummySpit blog in April and led to the setting of 26 public relations topics. The topics were sent to a Delphi study panel (of experts) in five continents covering top academics, leading practitioners and the CEOs of PR industry bodies. After three rounds of intensive email debate over a three month period, the Top Ten PR research topics emerged as follows (in descending order of priority):
1) Public relations’ role in contributing to strategic decision-making, strategy development and realisation, and organisational functioning
2) The value that public relations creates for organisations through building social capital, managing key relationships and realising organisational advantage
3) The measurement and evaluation of public relations, both offline and online
4) Public relations as a fundamental management function
5) Professional skills in public relations; analysis of the industry’s need for education
6) Research into standards of performance among PR professionals; the licensing of practitioners
7) Management of corporate reputation; measurement of reputation
8) Ethics in public relations
9) Integration of public relations with other communication functions; the scope of public relations practice; discipline boundaries
10) Management of relationships (and it's not mentioned in the document but I suspect the measurement of relationships is implied here as well)