An English instructor examined 9 Judy Blume adolescent novels and interviewed 12 students (grades 6, 7, and 8) who had read the novels to look at the world as it was presented in the books and to compare the instructor's own perceptions with those of the adolescent readers. The study revealed that the books did in fact dwell on the problems of…

Examples drawn from books and interviews of blacks reveal techniques of oral and literate communication both during and after slavery. These techniques fall into two complementary categories: communication as surreptitious resistance and communication about overt resisters. Surreptitious communication occurred through the use of code words which…

The 3 studies described in this paper focused on the image of the child in television advertising directed toward children between the ages of 2 and 11. Using an analysis code containing 16 operationally-defined categories, the first study analyzed the behaviors of children depicted in 37 commercials for toys, food, and clothing from Saturday…

In a 1974 Yale Law School address, United States Supreme Court Justice Stewart stated that the institutional press, as far as the Constitution is concerned, is autonomous and may publish what it knows and may seek to learn what it can. He also noted that the Court had rejected the Constitutional claim of a journalist's privilege not to reveal a…

A study was conducted to discover (1) how the Associated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI) wire services and the Nonaligned News Agencies Pool (NANAP) covered international affairs in terms of frequency of stories, countries covered, and kinds of subject matter; (2) differences and similarities in the three agencies' coverage of…

A quantitative content analysis and a thematic analysis were made of the "Washington Post," the "New York Times,""Newsweek," and "Time" from November 4, 1980, through January 20, 1981, to examine President-elect Reagan's transition period in order to determine his impression management--the way he defined…

A study was conducted to examine newspaper readers' responses to front page design and to explore the perceived differences among traditional, modern, and modular formats of newspaper design. Slides of the front pages of 10 pairs of competing daily newspapers were shown to 91 journalism students. After viewing three slides for each paper, subjects…

We present a fundamentally new coding procedure and a two-dimensional Curriculum Tool that reclassifies culturally diverse storybooks for the purpose of teaching cultural understanding. The reclassification results in 9 "cultural voices"--the joining of a book theme and its complexity of cultural content--used as the basis of various…

Describes a study of library-book preferences for black inner-city and white, middle class subn first graders. Similarities and differences are noted. Findings showed a marked disparity between the story content of first grade reading textbooks and content of preferred library books. Includes lists of fourteen most popular books from each school.…

Compilation of a list of the most common phrases used in reading was begun with the rationale that the quick recognition of phrases would facilitate reading comprehension. These first efforts showed that categorizing phrases by parts of speech did not provide acceptable levels of accuracy. The system that was effective, however, used a computer…

Content analysis was used to determine the evaluation criteria of high school and college teachers and college seniors in grading essay tests. Content analysis is defined as a way of asking a fixed set of questions unfalteringly of all of a predetermined body of writings, in such a way as to produce quantitative results. Four reponses to a…

Both criterion-referenced testing and behavioral assessment share the basic assumption that test behavior is a sample rather than a sign. In addition, both types of assessment focus on response capabilities and performance in specified content domains. Although content validity has been traditionally recognized as essential to criterion-referenced…

Based on the assumption that the content and symbolism of nursery rhymes reflect the particular needs of those who respond to them, this paper analyzes Mother Goose rhymes in relation to the psychological stages of child development. Each basic need of the child, as defined in Bruno Bettelheim's "The Uses of Enchantment," is applied to…

The major purpose of this thesis was to show that it is possible to develop a theoretically sound and empirically based rationale for determining the systematic introduction and use of vocabulary in middle-grade reading instructional material. A major portion of the research for this thesis consisted of a content analysis of six current reading…

This study compared the techniques used by college English teachers in their classrooms with the comments of subject experts concerning the value of these methods. In order to assess the frequency of teachers' use of specific techniques, a job analysis questionnaire consisting of 29 items was given to 15 faculty members and 15 doctoral students in…