To investigate whether "USA Today" emphasizes "good news" over "bad news," a study was conducted using 10 randomly selected adults in State College, Pennsylvania, over an 11-week period in 1985. Subjects were asked to rate 248 stories over 45 pages of main news columns in 10 issues on a scale ranging from 1 (very…

A study examined basal readers and trade books in terms of reading ease as estimated by readability formulas and the incidence of figurative language. Based on an earlier study, the study had three major goals: to (1) assess and compare two reading series ("A" and "B") at each of two grade levels; (2) assess and compare…

Content analysis was employed in an examination of nine major metropolitan daily newspapers to determine how they portrayed both black and white members of the United States House of Representatives from l979 to l983. Specifically, the study examined the amount of coverage given to a sample of 16 black and 16 white representatives, the way…

The notion that rhetoric (and to a lesser extent, argument) is epistemic is an increasingly popular one today, although it can be traced to ancient Greece. The notion holds that rhetoric, or the art of persuasion, creates and shapes knowledge. Two ancient authors--Aristophanes and Plato--provide evidence that others had notions of rhetoric as…

A study examined the organization, content and audiences of four public access channels to determine whether public access on cable television can be described as mini-communication and, if so, whether cable television is fulfilling some of its promises as a mini-medium. Organization was categorized as reflecting little or no hierarchy of…

Four Anglophone African newspapers were analyzed to determine whether their presentation of major foreign news was affected by the "New World Information Order" debate: the Western view that media should be free to challenge governments if necessary versus the Third World perspective that the press should be part of an integrated system…

A study examined the lyrics of the lovesongs of the musical partnership Eurythmics (David Stewart and Annie Lennox), a popular music group. The method used was based on the James Chesbro study, which classified lyrics using a critical paradigm that combined Northrop Frye's hierarchy of communications systems (Ironic, Mimetic, Leader-centered,…

The purpose of this paper is to examine how recent demand for greater realism in portrayals of Irish life in the television and film industries serves to authenticate existing stereotypes and romantic images which characterize "Irishness" in the popular imagination rather than refute or undermine them. Discussions of a political thriller…

Utilizing both content analysis of 139 editorials appearing in 19 United States daily newspapers and the results of a survey of 146 newspaper editors, a study asked three questions: (1) To what extent is hunger covered in the news and editorial columns of U.S. daily newspapers? (2) How is hunger defined as a problem in terms of its causes in those…

The use of general systems theory in the field of instructional systems design (ISD) is explored in this paper. Drawing on work by Young, the writings of 12 representative ISD writers and researchers were surveyed to determine the use of 60 general systems theory concepts by the individual authors. The average number of concepts used by these…

Sixty-seven educational research journals were investigated to determine the frequency of usage of inferential statistical techniques therein. The most frequently used statistical methodologies in the literature reviewed, which utilized inferential approaches, are the following: analysis of variance, correlation, t-test, multiple analysis of…

Conference papers calling for newer constructs in organizational theory to explicate problems in understanding educational organizations were content analyzed to explore paradigmatic assumptions and to demonstrate a fit between assumptions. Papers supporting the use of qualitative methodologies were also analyzed. The papers were from the 1983…

A study analyzed and compared the content of four reading journals to determine the extent to which articles concretely described strategies for teaching comprehension or for following up on comprehension instruction. A total of 654 articles from 1973 and 1983 were content analyzed for eight categories of comprehension instruction and three…

Developmental differences in summaries of expository texts were examined for fourth and sixth grade students in two experiments. Experiment 1 used texts that had a description content structure whereas Experiment 2 texts had a thesis/evidence content structure. Manipulation of the presence or absence of the topic sentence allowed the examination…

Coverage of Ronald Reagan's China policy in three major newspapers--the "Los Angeles Times," the "New York Times," and the "Washington Post"--immediately before and after he assumed the presidency was submitted to content analysis. Results showed that the newspapers differed significantly both in their treatment of…