Based on a preliminary examination of over 1,200 article titles and abstracts and a subsequent review of selected articles, this booklet presents in highly abbreviated tabular format the most important research in the field of instructional microcomputing, including both computer assisted and computer managed instruction in elementary, secondary,…

This study examined the effects of computer experience, age, and sex on attitudes toward computers among 142 high school language arts students, 107 community college mathematics students, and 105 students living in dormitories at a small liberal arts college. Computer attitudes (computer anxiety, computer confidence, and computer liking) were…

Working from a knowledge gap hypothesis stating that as amounts of information in a community or society increase, segments of the population with more education and higher socioeconomic status acquire this information at a greater rate than do lower status groups, a study examined the contributions to neighborhood residents' knowledge of local…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 11 titles deal with the following topics: (1) the Supreme Court and the limits of the First Amendment in "Zurcher v. Stanford Daily"; (2) the radical journalist, I. F. Stone; (3) group owned vs. independentl owned…

To explore whether there is a recognizable point (a terminology-setting event, e.g., a scholarly conference, a special issue of a journal, or a particularly influential journal article) in the development of a new branch of knowledge that serves to codify a vocabulary for the researchers of that field, electronic and manual searches were conducted…

Although Eleanor Roosevelt's career as a magazine journalist has been all but forgotten, it was an important part of her public activity while she was First Lady from 1933 to 1945. In contrast to ideas then current, Mrs. Roosevelt insisted on her right to earn money from her magazine work while in the White House. There is also evidence that her…

To determine what general aspects of photographs appeal to readers--as opposed to subject matter categories that might or might not be tied to events--95 college students reported their readership of three alternate front pages of the daily student newspaper. Specifically, the study examined whether readers were more likely to read stories…

A study examined the effects of published film reviews on viewers' interest in and evaluation of the reviewed film. In the film interest experiment, 89 undergraduate students were randomly assigned positive, mixed, or negative reviews of a British film. The control group received a review of a different film. Subjects were asked to read the…

To examine colonial American press coverage of the British court decision to free American slave James Somerset, a study was conducted to clarify why the decision worked as a victory for British abolitionists but was usually cited even in post-Revolution America in the passage of increasingly oppressive slave legislation. Twenty-three of the…

Relying on Daniel Boorstin's argument that the newspaper was at least one of the first institutions in a frontier community, a study examined the 1880 United States Census of eight western territories to determine the number of newspapers and the ratio of newspapers to population in frontier counties. Three groups were examined: counties that had…

Reporters' perceived concern for their editors' news priorities and their own role self-concepts were examined for their effects on how reporters covering the Indiana State Assembly used diverse sources of information. Subjects, 34 reporters and 39 state senators, were surveyed concerning their contacts with each other during the 1982 legislative…

A study tested the hypotheses that the relative amount of bad news and good news in a newspaper would have corresponding effects on perceptions of the newspaper's community of origin and of the newspaper itself. Five different versions of a realistic four-page newspaper were created, in which treatment of the news stories ranged from an…

An examination of Dorothy Day's role as chief journalist, editor, and publisher of "The Catholic Worker," the ideological monthly she cofounded in 1933, reveals that she was the final authority within the organization of the newspaper. Deeply committed to proselytizing for her cause, the Catholic Worker Movement, Day still simultaneously…

A study analyzed the quality of reporting of public opinion polls in six selected newspapers during the final 65 days of the 1988 presidential campaign. The eight disclosure standards used were based upon the latest version of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) code of Professional Ethics and Practices. The newspapers…

Two variables that designers should consider when developing computer-based instruction (CBI) text screens are text density, which manipulates the context of the information presented, and screen density, which is a measurement of the amount of information presented at one time on the screen. A study on text density was designed to identify…