A study of the 1980 debate between Republican presidential candidates Ronald Reagan and George Bush demonstrates what influence, if any, a debate has on the voting public. The unit of analysis used in the study was each single message presented by each candidate without interruption by the other candidate or the moderator. Two investigators made…

An evaluation of the Shock bibliography, which appears regularly in the Journal of Gerontology was conducted in two modes: first, a survey of use and satisfaction of user needs among a 25 percent random sample of teaching and research faculty of the Faye McBeath Institute on Aging and Adult Life at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and second,…

This report provides a review of literature exploring accuracy in newspaper stories. The findings discussed do not reveal definite reasons for inaccuracy, but several possible error sources are delineated: amount of reporter involvement, type of news, psychological factors (stress, news reporters' fantasies, open/closed-mindedness, tendency to…

The Fry Readability Graph was used to determine the validity of the publisher's recommended grade usage for four reading series at the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade levels. Three samples were analyzed from each text, and these results were compared with the publisher's stated grade levels. The majority of the basals investigated had an average…

The 1976-79 schedules of the three major television networks were analyzed to determine what strategies were used to organize prime time schedules and what types of programs appeared during prime time viewing periods. Five essential programing strategies were identified: fraction of selection (cost versus reward), lowest common denominator (wide…

A content analysis of "McClure's Magazine," often cited as initiating the muckraking era, was undertaken to assess whether muckraking content constituted the dominant element in the appeal the magazine had for its readers. The publication period 1903-1905 was chosen for the study; each monthly issue was examined; and each article,…

Employing a "resource dependency" model from organizational theory, this paper explains the growth of newspaper cooperation out of publisher competition in Chicago (Illinois) journalism during the period 1880 to 1910. It suggests that publisher cooperation in business matters also resulted in a changed news coverage style and emphasis. It argues…

Noting that United States Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas has often been characterized as an "absolutist" in terms of First Amendment policy, this paper argues that, in fact, Douglas's policy positions provided for less than absolute freedom to communicate. The paper then reveals, through an anlaysis of 18 of Douglas's opinions,…

Three frontier newspapers in Michigan for the period July 1849 to July 1850 were analyzed to determine how women were depicted in the press of that time. The research concentrated on coverage in six areas: courtship and marriage; the role of women as wives and mothers; women depicted in literature; famous women; women's rights in the home, on the…

This four-part paper is designed to serve as a conceptual framework for use as a scheme in the selection and organization of content for the Wisocnsin home economics curriculum. In the introductory section the task to be accomplished is set forth and a framework established for the development of the paper. In section 2, attention is given to the…

A model of instruction is discussed and developed. The model has five requisite components; they are descriptions of: (1) the instruction agent's subject matter representation; (2) the learner's initial and current subject matter representations; (3) the instructional process itself; (4) the state of the learner at any point in the instructional…

Appendix I is concerned with the structure of axiomatic theories. Both the syntactic and deductive structure exhibited by axiomatic theories is investigated. Dependency is defined and a method is described that can be used to identify all dependencies that exist between axiomatic components. The ability to eliminate defined concepts and…

A two-part study was designed to measure the amount of good news and bad news in newspapers and to measure readers' recall of stories that represented good news and bad news. The stories used in the study appeared on the front pages and on one of the inside pages of eight California newspapers during October 1978. A total of 559 telephone…

This study determined readability levels of 149 selected free or inexpensive career-education publications from a list in the "Educator's Index of Free Materials." Analyses based on the Dale-Chall readability formula indicated that the majority of the materials were written at the college level. An extensive appendix summarizes the content and…

This paper reports on a study of the content of the lyrics of 100 country-western songs. It presents findings concerning the primary subject matter of the songs, female and male roles portrayed, and the value system implicit in the song lyrics. Among the findings were that the single most-valued subject in country-western music is romantic love;…