This document, one in a series developed to provide technical assistance to 22 Long-Term Care Gerontology Centers, addresses the application of evaluation procedures within centers and their component programs and projects, including: (1) interdisciplinary education and training; (2) service and practice model development; (3) research; (4)…

A study of the role of the attention construct in the process of transforming specific newspaper and television media content into political knowledge involved a survey of 71 undergraduate students in an introductory journalism course. A review of the literature had revealed that the use of the attention construct had been infrequent in mass media…

A study was undertaken to explore the power structure in a Southwestern community of 93,000 and to determine which elements in that power structure had the most influence in a local school bond referendum. The data for the study were collected using two techniques. First, a panel of knowledgeable community members identified 85 politically…

The three participants in educational policy-making include public representatives, professional educators, and the general public. Although public representatives are underpaid and under pressure, they are often criticized for ignoring public opinion and delegating too much power to superintendents. Professional educators have been blamed for…

Presented in this paper are the results of interviews undertaken in 1977 to determine who supported a new statewide minimum standards bill in New Jersey and why. The views of forty individuals who were selected on the basis of their active involvement in the statewide minimum standards issue, are summarized in statements following each of twelve…

This letter to members of the American Federation of Teachers from the President of the Federation overviews the current employment situtation in education and advocates a change in educational focus from numbers of children educated to quality of education offered. The Federation position on universal and free early childhood education and day…

Federal involvement in higher education and the legislative and political history of this involvement are reviewed. It is shown that there is no single federal policy towards basic research, scholarship, and graduate education. The result of changes in policy of a number of agencies can be financial and programmatic uncertainty. Federal activity…

Unofficial estimates suggest that there are a quarter million people of East Indian origin in the United States. This paper focuses on the attitudes of these overseas Indians toward public policy priorities in India. A sample of 1129 people of East Indian origin listed in an ethnic biographical dictionary were mailed a 96-item comprehensive…

The author demonstrates why he thinks the Supreme Court has misinterpreted the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." The author claims that the Supreme Court, based on flawed reading of the…

Approximately 500 people were interviewed in a study designed to assess the effectiveness of and response-motivation to a public action campaign in a developing country. It focused on Nigeria's voter registration drive conducted in preparation for that country's first political elections in more than 13 years and explored some factors that…

Written for secondary school Canadian students, the document examines Canada's international trade policy. It is arranged in three sections. Part I discusses the affect of Canada's trade policy on the individual citizen. Tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade such as import licenses, preferential purchasing agreements, health and safety…

Data for this study of the relationship between voter status (vote switcher, undecided voter, decided voter) and political knowledge were collected from 141 respondents in five southern Illinois counties during a 1974 congressional election and from 295 respondents in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, during the 1976 presidential campaign. The study…

This report examines the status of school desegregation efforts in Southern and Border States immediately before and after the May 1968 U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that school districts must abandon ineffective freedom-of-choice plans. Separate sections devoted to events in each state contain specific detail describing the political, legislative,…

This paper examines the overall effect of the 1976 presidential debates on the public's learning about issues and candidates, identifying several factors that are linked to campaign learning and that explain individual differences in the amount of learning that occurred from watching the debates. Findings presented in this paper are based on an…

The phenomenon of the close relationship between communication and public opinion is shown in this book to have played a major role historically in the measurement of support for political policies, officials, and candidates. The communications media influence public opinion and are subject to it; yet the precise nature and definition of public…