A content analysis of selected issues of "Life" magazine was conducted to explore the way in which that magazine portrayed the black community in the United States. All 52 issues within each of eight years (1937, 1942, 1947, 1952, 1957, 1962, 1967, and 1972) were analyzed. Beyond tabulation of frequency and amount of coverage, each instance of…

Three basic conceptual issues that underlie studies of the content of instruction are explored in this paper. These include the need to reach a common definition of the concept of content of instruction, to undertake a serious analysis of the taxonomies presently employed in studies of content, and to critically examine the units of observation…

The preparation of spelling skills indices, which may be used to describe the spelling content commonly taught in textbooks and the performance modes used to practice this content, is outlined in this paper. Separate sections discuss the preliminary analysis that was performed; the establishment of a Content Index that specifies major categories…

The television networks nightly news coverage of the 1972 Presidential campaign was examined between July 10 and November 6, 1972 to assess the nature and impact of political bias in news coverage. The campaign news coverage of two newspapers and one wire service was also compared with respect to the content and length of each medium's news about…

The content analysis of television has always been associated with unique procedural problems because television programming must be successfully captured and sampled before analysis can begin; some of the problems and recent advances in this area are reviewed, i.e., sampling, measurement, and the videotape equipment used in coding. An extensive…

A content analysis of the 37 Caldecott Medal Award books was undertaken to determine to what extent these books, supposedly the models to which other children's picture story books should aspire, used stereotyped female images. Seven sex role behaviors were examined: the image of the female as subordinate to the other sex, as one who fails, as the…

A content analysis of issues of "Ladies' Home Journal" drawn from the early 1960s and from the mid-1970s was conducted to determine if fiction and advertising in the magazines had shown any response to the women's movement and if there was a difference between fiction and advertising in their response to that movement. A total of 12…

Both structured and free response questionnaires were given to 600 Australian children (100 each of 6-, 7-, and 8-year-old boys and girls) on perceptions of their parents. The free response questionnaire asked children to complete sentences beginning with the phrase "Mothers are" or the phrase "Fathers are." The structured…

To determine the amount and kind of news about foreign countries available to most small-to-medium-sized mass media in the United States, foreign dateline stories of the Associated Press Interbureau (IB Blend) and the United Press International state wire were content analyzed for two weeks of consecutive days and two "constructed week"…

Four experiments involving 54 adults were performed to examine the relationship between the effects of story grammar categories and content centrality on subjects' importance ratings, summaries, immediate recall, and delayed recall. Results of the studies indicated that central content units were judged as more important and were better recalled…

In 1965, transcripts were collected of 72 sermons on the issue of racial integration preached between 1955 and 1965. The sermons, all given by Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, or Episcopal ministers in the southern United States, were examined to determine the position advocated by the minister. The sermons deemed segregationist were then…

Four strategies that are useful in conducting research on experiential education programs are discussed and illustrated. These include: case studies, content analysis, use of a focused survey, and concept analysis. Each strategy addresses an issue particular to experiential education. Case studies allow data collection on a large number of…

Two books that use documentary photography to examine social problems--"You Have Seen Their Faces," a 1937 study of Southern sharecroppers by Margaret Bourke-White and Erskine Caldwell, and "An American Exodus," a 1939 examination of the migration of farm families by Dorothea Lange and Paul S. Taylor--are compared in this…

This study compared syntactic complexity and vocabulary diversity in two groups of books that can be used for reading aloud to preschool children: books recommended by authorities in reading and children's literature for reading aloud and "grocery store" books (small, inexpensive picture books that can be purchased in grocery stores).…

A study analyzed vocational education research applications submitted to the U.S. Office of Education for potential funding in fiscal year 1975 to determine if there is a point of diminishing returns in quality as the number of pages in a research proposal or application are increased. A total of 353 applications were used to explore the…