Public Relations Review 36 (2010) 190–192 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Public Relations Review Research in brief A quantitative review of crisis communication research in public relations from 1991 to 2009  Elizabeth Johnson Avery a,* , Ruthann Weaver Lariscy b , Sora Kim c , Tatjana Hocke d a Public Relations, The University of Tennessee, 476 Communications Building, Knoxville, TN 37996, United States b The University of Georgia, Athens, GA, United States c DePaul University, Chicago, IL, United States d The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, United States article info Article history: Received 28 October 2009 Received in revised form 30 December 2009 Accepted 5 January 2010 Keywords: Public relations Crisis communication Situational crisis communication theory Image restoration theory abstract This study quantitatively examines 18 years (1991–2009) of data, 66 published articles, from the crisis communication domain in public relations using Coombs’ situational crisis communication theory and Benoit’s image restoration theory as the theoretical foundation for analysis. Overall recommendations indicate crisis communication research in public relations may be enriched both theoretically and pragmatically through more diverse con- textual and methodological applications and could be less descriptive and more prescriptive through richer scholarly commentary and criticism in support for the models. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Few topics have been so fully embraced within public relations as crises. To date, no research has documented the totality of published studies in this burgeoning field; there has not been a documentation of which methods are used, with what findings, or an explanation of how and why discrepancies in prescriptions exist. This study seeks to partially fill this void; quantitative content analytic techniques were used to examine crisis literature in public relations and communication journals over an 18-year period with a goal of documenting the methods employed, the schema or theory base, overall levels of theoretical support, and other longitudinal trends in crisis communication theory and research. Our goal is to contribute an objective schema for reviewing a large body of work and hopefully assist other scholars in deciphering such a wide array of findings. There are two primary streams of research that account for the majority of published studies on crisis management and communication in public relations, the theory of image restoration (Benoit, 1995, 1997) and the situational crisis communi- cation theory (SCCT) (Coombs, 1995). This investigation of 18 years of that research focuses on those two bodies of work, as they have established somewhat of a dominant paradigm in crisis communication research in public relations. The following questions are asked for analysis of a census of published articles employing Benoit’s and Coombs’ work. 1. Research questions RQ1: What are longitudinal trends in use of crisis communication theory in public relations research and its contextual applications between 1991 and 2009, with regard to: (a) frequency of use; (b) level of support; (c) contextual applica-  The complete study can be requested from the first author. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 706 254 7020; fax: +1 865 974 2826. E-mail address: ejavery@utk.edu (E.J. Avery). 0363-8111/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2010.01.001