Today's melodramas reveal significant trends in terms of gender, class, and the nature of tribulations. This article surveys the dominant features of family melodramas including soap operas, prime time serials such as "Dallas" and "Dynasty," and theatrical feature films. (PD)

Examines issues of the three Minneapolis, Minnesota newspapers publishing in the period 1900-1905 to determine their role in exposing malfeasance in government. (FL)

Presents summaries of eight research reports. Topics discussed include (1) television use and social stereotypes, (2) a magazine for Arab women, (3) television newswomen in Texas, (4) sensationalism and science issues, (5) datelines and news stories, and (6) the content of paid and free circulation weeklies. (FL)

Describes a technique which requires beginning students in an interpersonal communication course to analyze and evaluate the advice given on interpersonal relations as stated in the lyrics of popular songs. (PD)

Describes an exercise in the content analysis of political ideologies. Advantages of the exercise include that it teaches students to employ content analysis as a method of research and that it introduces them to the ideological statements of America's leading social critics. (DB)

Content analysis of systematically selected paragraphs of the three major textbooks used in teaching college-level home management courses was used to examine the hypothesis that they portray, and implicitly endorse, an ideal family type. Implications of the findings for home economists and family practitioners are discussed. (Author/CT)

Investigates how one media outlet, "Time" magazine, has reported American religion over the past 30 years. Observes that coverage patterns can be explained by its rhetorical protocol which demands action, conflict, and personality. "Time" follows this rhetorical formula in all varieties of news, including religious, because the…

Examined popular self-help books to determine how they portray organizational life and the female manager. Concluded that their rhetorical vision of the female manager is superficial and that for the woman who participates in this view of organizational life, the books present incomplete, contradictory, and debilitating advice. (PD)

Analyzes nineteenth-century newspapers to show that reformers and journalists then believed in the political power of information and used political information and agenda-setting as tools for gaining political power. Suggests that political science agenda-setting models are better than those from communication research for understanding past…

Investigated how people with congenital orthopedic disabilities intially learn that they are different and how they learn the evaluative meaning associated with being disabled. Analyzed the content of 29 autobiographies. Results indicated that people born with orthopedic disabilities discover between ages 3 and 5 that they are different. (Author)

Reviews picture books published from 1960 through 1980 to determine how they portrayed grandparents. Concludes that older adults are dealt with in many different ways in such books. Provides a list of books appropriate for primary school children that present positive images of grandparents. (FL)

A comparison of comprehension questions in teachers' manuals for two meaning-based basal series with two decoding-based linguistic/phonic series found that individual series types maintained their philosophical integrity in their approaches to questions. (FL)

Examined the adequacy of the cognitive developmental stage hypothesis in accounting for the development of children's friendship expectations. It was concluded that cognitive-developmental stages may be of limited value in predicting the development of friendship expectation unless only broad age changes are sought. (Author/RH)

Describes and evaluates a two-semester college-level course in pediatric psychology involving classroom and hospital experiences. Evaluations indicated that most students were very interested in the course and that many were considering careers involving chronically ill or disturbed children. (DB)

This reviewer finds the CBS special "Is Anyone Out There Learning?" shallow and simplistic in its treatment of the schools. She cites data contradicting several assertions made on the program. All articles in this journal issue comment on this CBS television program, aired in August, 1978. (SJL)