Ethical Judgments among Public Relations Officers in Higher Education Institutions
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Date
2003-06
Authors
El-Astal, Mohammed Abed Said
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Abstract
The study determines: how ethical/unethical certain hypothetical public relations
practices are as perceived by public relations practitioners in higher education
institutions (universities, colleges, institutes, schools) in the United States, India, China,
Malaysia, Thailand, Israel, Palestine, and the United Arab Emirates; whether the
institution type, practitioners' personal attributes, professional characteristics and
responsibilities produce significant differences in their ethical judgments; and finally to
determine the extent to which religion and the policy of the institution for which each
practitioner serves influence his/her ethical judgments.
The population consists of public relations officers in the institutions that have English
web-sites only. A systematic random sample of 254 ( 1 0%) institutions was drawn from
2540 of the United States, while all English web-sited institutions of the other countries
were surveyed.
For this purpose, a three-part, closed and open-ended questionnaire was designed. The
first part of the questionnaire was designed to gather data about the institutions and the
public relations officers' personal attributes and professional. characteristics. The second . . ...
part was designed for gathering information about the responsibilities of the officers. In
the third part, the officers, through a likert-type 4-point scale, were asked to state their
opinions about how ethical/unethical the 25 hypothetical practices suggested are; and to
state also the factor/s influenced or shaped their ethical judgments.
~inety-nine (17.27%) out of 573 public relations officers completed the questionnaire.
Research data were analyzed using SPSS- program for Windows software, version 1 0.0.The study concluded the following: (1) Respondents' ethical judgments on the practices
suggested came consistent with the IPRA Codes of Conduct adopted in Venice and
Athens, and with the literature written on public relations ethical standards. · (2)
Differences in the ethical judgments of respondents were found statistically significant
in terms of culture and religion.
(3) Differences in the ethical judgments of respondents, having different professional
characteristics, were found statistically insignificant in terms of experience; while
significant in terms of: specialties, accredited-pr-association membership, and finally
tenure. (4) Differ«?nces in .t he ethical-judgments of respondents, having differ.ent -. ..
professional responsibilities, were found statistically insignificant in terms of
responsibility for institutional advertising; while significant in terms of: responsibility
for community relations, fund-raising planning, and in terms of participating in policyadopting
discussions.
(5) Finally, the policy of the institution was the highest influence in the 25 hypothetical
situations followed by religion and institution policy, religion, personal ethics and
professional ethics consecutively.
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Keywords
Ethical Judgement , Public Relation , Higher Education