Interest in PR and corporate communication evaluation has surged in recent years as the fields have grown in size and sophistication, and also because the practitioners have found increasingly that they are being asked to be accountable for what they do. In the same time, the subject became a key point on academics’ and scholars’ agenda; for example, under the auspices of the Institute of Public Relation was formed the Commission on PR Measurement and Evaluation, which aims to establish standards and methods for PR research and measurement; more, under the coordination of the same institution (commission) was published even a Dictionary of PR Measurement and Research (2006 - latest version). Specialists have developed a number of models to explain how and when to apply evaluation in PR and corporate communication: the PII Model (Cutlip, 1985), the Macro Model of PR Evaluation (Macnamara, 1992), the PR Effectiveness Yardstick Model (Lindenman, 1993), the Continuing Model of Evaluation (Watson, 1997), the Unified Evaluation Model (Noble&Watson, 1999) and so on.When considering evaluation, the literature in the field focuses on some aspects like importance of evaluation (to demonstrate the value and the efficiency of PR and corporate communication), barriers to evaluation (lack of specific knowledge, lack of understanding, lack of time&money etc.), “must-s” of evaluation (setting measurable objectives and evaluating on a continous basis), phases of evaluation (measuring inputs, outputs, outcomes, out-takes), tools, techniques and techniques for measuring corporate communication (response mechansism, media and web analysis, surveys and polls, audits, focus groups) and so on. This paper offers an overview on evaluation and measurement approaches and tries to answer a question: “Are PR specialists/ practitioners able to carry accurate measurement and evaluation?”.
First of all, I think that a very clear distinction should be done between evaluation and measurement: even if both of them try to demonstrate the effectiveness of PR and corporate communication, the last one is more objective and should be translated in a quantifiable or numerical manner. And the question that appears is: How many PR specialists could define and make use of concepts like Analysis of Variance, Correlation, Regression, Standard Deviation etc. that are included in the “Dictionary of PR Measurement and Evaluation”? Second, I think that PR specialists don’t think (nor act) like business managers yet. Without a clear understanding of the way the companies are measuring business success (gross profit margin, revenue, market share, key performance indicators etc.), any attempt to demonstrate the accountability would be impossible. Last, but not least, I think that the world of academics (in Romania) should focuses more on this topic; any individual effort to penetrate the web of measurement methodologies will have, probably, no effect, without the support of some specialists in management, sociology and statistics.

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