U.S. Public Diplomat in Residence, Dr. Robert Banks:  Evaluating Public Diplomacy

The USC Center on Public Diplomacy was pleased to host the U.S. State Department Public Diplomat in Residence (2009-2011) Dr. Robert Banks spoke about his ongoing research project on public diplomacy evaluation.

This project has been examining extant research on the topic of PD evaluation. It includes resources on evaluation as practiced by the private sector, especially in the field of PR, and by foreign governments (the UK in particular), as well as research on the major elements of public diplomacy: media outreach, cultural programming, exchanges, social networks, and international broadcasting. Special attention has been devoted to how the U.S. Government has historically approached the goal of measuring performance in PD and where that process is today.

The result of this research will be an annotated bibliography on key resources in the study of PD evaluation.
 

Summary
Dr. Banks discussed the hot topic of public diplomacy evaluation – its challenges, benefits and what needs to be done for the future. Some of the biggest challenges revolve around how to conduct the research and correlating data to specific public diplomacy initiatives. Another difficulty in evaluation is when participants in programs are unavailable for interviews and project managers, such as Foreign Service officers, have their terms end before projects are completed. Though difficulties exist, evaluation is still a fantastic way to understand which tactics work for future projects, gain stakeholder confidence for continued funding and legitimize the efforts of public diplomacy professionals. For the future more methods of evaluation need to be adopted, beyond the popular technique of polling, evaluation needs to have incentives and results must be communicated in a timely manner. More research also needs to be done on the effectiveness of public-private partnerships, the benefits and negatives. Improved public diplomacy evaluations will allow this field to be more recognized for the change it contributes.