Beginning in 1936, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt wrote an unprecedented newspaper column that provided readers with a detailed recital of her daily activities. Titled "My Day," the column gave behind-the-scenes glimpses of White House life and served as a platform from which the First Lady could state her personal views. The column was a…

Almost every discussion of technical or scientific writing style mentions the passive voice as a stylistic choice to avoid. However, the passive voice does have legitimate uses in technical and scientific writing--the problem is to define the appropriate or effective uses and the inappropriate or ineffective ones. An examination of passive voice…

A study was conducted to identify Bible references useful to adult reading teachers in special educational settings. Bible references to reading were first identified by analyzing papers written by education students on the Bible and the teaching of reading. From these papers, 49 key words relating to reading found in the Bible were identified.…

An analytical model for the grammatical description of educational television is illustrated by an examination of what television does to a traditional plot in a dramatic narrative. Segments from dramatic narratives presented on educational channels were videotaped, and a program of observation and recording of elements for video programs was…

A study of the 1980 debate between Republican presidential candidates Ronald Reagan and George Bush demonstrates what influence, if any, a debate has on the voting public. The unit of analysis used in the study was each single message presented by each candidate without interruption by the other candidate or the moderator. Two investigators made…

An evaluation of the Shock bibliography, which appears regularly in the Journal of Gerontology was conducted in two modes: first, a survey of use and satisfaction of user needs among a 25 percent random sample of teaching and research faculty of the Faye McBeath Institute on Aging and Adult Life at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and second,…

This report provides a review of literature exploring accuracy in newspaper stories. The findings discussed do not reveal definite reasons for inaccuracy, but several possible error sources are delineated: amount of reporter involvement, type of news, psychological factors (stress, news reporters' fantasies, open/closed-mindedness, tendency to…

The Fry Readability Graph was used to determine the validity of the publisher's recommended grade usage for four reading series at the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade levels. Three samples were analyzed from each text, and these results were compared with the publisher's stated grade levels. The majority of the basals investigated had an average…

The 1976-79 schedules of the three major television networks were analyzed to determine what strategies were used to organize prime time schedules and what types of programs appeared during prime time viewing periods. Five essential programing strategies were identified: fraction of selection (cost versus reward), lowest common denominator (wide…

A content analysis of "McClure's Magazine," often cited as initiating the muckraking era, was undertaken to assess whether muckraking content constituted the dominant element in the appeal the magazine had for its readers. The publication period 1903-1905 was chosen for the study; each monthly issue was examined; and each article,…

Employing a "resource dependency" model from organizational theory, this paper explains the growth of newspaper cooperation out of publisher competition in Chicago (Illinois) journalism during the period 1880 to 1910. It suggests that publisher cooperation in business matters also resulted in a changed news coverage style and emphasis. It argues…

Noting that United States Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas has often been characterized as an "absolutist" in terms of First Amendment policy, this paper argues that, in fact, Douglas's policy positions provided for less than absolute freedom to communicate. The paper then reveals, through an anlaysis of 18 of Douglas's opinions,…

Three frontier newspapers in Michigan for the period July 1849 to July 1850 were analyzed to determine how women were depicted in the press of that time. The research concentrated on coverage in six areas: courtship and marriage; the role of women as wives and mothers; women depicted in literature; famous women; women's rights in the home, on the…

This four-part paper is designed to serve as a conceptual framework for use as a scheme in the selection and organization of content for the Wisocnsin home economics curriculum. In the introductory section the task to be accomplished is set forth and a framework established for the development of the paper. In section 2, attention is given to the…

A model of instruction is discussed and developed. The model has five requisite components; they are descriptions of: (1) the instruction agent's subject matter representation; (2) the learner's initial and current subject matter representations; (3) the instructional process itself; (4) the state of the learner at any point in the instructional…