Researcher Responsibility to Diversity and Inclusion in Public Relations and Social Scientific Research: A Call for More Inclusive Research and Researcher Participation

Public relations researchers make inferential claims about populations based on analysis and evaluation of data they have collected from smaller samples of people. A question that has been raised in the social sciences is how well the populations sampled in conducted studies represent or reflect broader populations. We also ponder, to what extent DEI-related topics are explored in public relations scholarship. We conducted a quantitative content analysis of 1,277 articles published in leading, peer-reviewed journals in public relations or adjacent journals in mass communication, strategic communication, and communication studies known to publish public relations research. We found that scholars are not providing complete demographic data when conducting research involving human participants; samples include significantly more women than are represented in the most current U.S. Census; samples overly rely on White participants; samples include significantly fewer persons of Latin origin than reflected in the most current U.S. census; and DEI-related publications are still proportionally few but are increasing. Based on these findings, we introduce the Researcher Responsibility to Diversity and Inclusion, which provides six guiding principles for journal editors and researchers to advance disciplinary theorizing and research and to make inclusivity a more central aspect of disciplinary theory and research.