This thesis created a profile of Indiana's association public relations practitioners to see what type of roles they performed and how involved they were in the decision-making processes of their association.Because of the lack of research done on associations and their public relations practitioners, this descriptive study attempted to draw a profile of association public relations practitioners in Indiana that could be applied to different parts of the country or nationwide. The study also provided a foundation on which future research concerning associations can be based.Of the 129 associations in the population, 83 practitioners responded (64.3 response rate) to the phone survey. Information was gathered concerning the practitioner's job roles, their involvement in the decision-making process as well as demographic information about the associations and themselves.Broom and Smith's four public relations roles (expert prescriber, problem-solving process facilitator, communication facilitator and communication technician) were used to see if the practitioners primarily played any specific role in their association.The findings of the study indicated that public relations practitioners in associations don't play any one of the roles primarily but perform all four to varying degrees. All of the practitioners, both men and women, were equally involved in the decision-making processes of their associations. Previous studies in these topic areas indicated that men would primarily perform the role of expert prescriber and women would primarily perform the role of communication technician. Previous research also showed men would also be more involved in the decision-making process instead of women because they performed the necessary roles that allowed for that involvement. The results from the association survey show that association public relations practitioners are quite different from the norm. These differences can be attributed to several reasons. The lack of departmentalization and smaller staff sizes cause association public relations practitioners to wear more than one hat or perform various roles to varying degrees. It is because of the multiplicity of roles they perform that public relations practitioners are allowed to be more involved in the decision-making process as opposed to other practitioners who perform a certain role a majority of the time. / Department of Journalism
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/184099 |
| Date | January 1991 |
| Creators | Fryman, Jonathan Eric |
| Contributors | Ball State University. Dept. of Journalism., McDonald, Becky A. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | 41 leaves ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
| Coverage | n-us-in |
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