COMM375 CHAPTER 2 READING SCIENTIFIC METHODS IN MEDIA EFFECTS RESEARCH How would one go about discovering the effects of media content o Three scientific methods which are CONTENT ANALYSIS SURVEY EXPERIMENT ANALYZING MEDIA CONTENT o Content Analysis allows a researcher to describe the nature of the content of communication in a systematic and rigorous fashion Can be applied to almost any type of communication IS a logical beginning point for the investigation of media effects b c it helps us to discover what content is present that might be bringing about various effects WHAT IS CONTENT ANALYSIS o Definition by Bernard Berelson Content Analysis is a research technique for the objective systematic and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication Essentially it is a method that allows the researcher to describe messages in quantitative terms even though those messages are essentially verbal or nonquantitative in nature o Content analysis is objective in the sense that the method permits multiple researchers to examine the same content and come to identical conclusions o CODER A person who examines the content and classifies it into categories Any coder who understands the rules or procedures will arrive at the same coding of the message content as any other coder o The data that result from a content analysis are quantitative o CONTENT ANALYSIS is concerned with the coding of manifest content rather than latent content MANIFEST CONTENT Refers to the material that actually appears and requires a minimum of interpretation by the coder LATENT CONTENT Is content that might become apparent after a coder has interpreted or read between the lines of the message before coding TYPES OF SURVEYS o CROSS SECTIONAL SURVEY Occurs at a single point in time and involves a single sample o LONGITUDINAL SURVEY Includes more than one sample taken at different points in time THERE ARE 3 DIFFERENT KINDS 1 TREND STUDY Individuals who are surveyed the first time are not the same individuals who are surveyed the second time but they are from the same category of people EX I surveyed different members of different freshman classes COHORT STUDY Allows the researcher to assess changes in a general Cohort Group but not in the same individual Suppose I want to study the freshman class of 06 instead of my next study being fresh class of 07 I study Sophomores of 07 Juniors of 08 and Seniors of 09 PANEL STUDY LONG TERM PANEL STUDIES ARE Relatively rare because of the amount of time it takes and effort it takes to keep track of the SAME individuals over time BUT SHORT TERM PANEL STUDIES ARE Often used during political campaigns to track attitudinal changes that might take place in response to media messages and other political events THE SEARCH FOR CASUAL RELATIONSHIPS o Media messages bring about some change in people s thoughts attitudes emotions behaviors and so on The researcher is interested in documenting CASUAL RELATIONSHIPS between media and people THREE GENERAL CRITERIA need to be met before a researcher can make the claim that one thing the media message is causing another a change in attitude or behavior for example CRITERIA FOR CAUSAL RELATIONSHIPS o The first thing that needs to be established before making a claim that one thing causes another for researchers is that the two things in question are empirically related to each other To document that watching TV CAUSED people to become more obese researchers first needed to establish that these two variables TV viewing time and Level of obesity were actually related to each other Researchers need a specific tool to detect an empirical relationship like this one The most common statistical tool used to determine relationships between two variables is the technique of CORRELATION o Correlation Coefficients If increases in one of the variables tended to go along with increases in the other variable then the two variables would have a POSITIVE CORRELATION When Increases in one of the variables tend to go along with decreases in the other variable the two variables would have a NEGATIVE CORRELATION B o The second thing that must be met to establish a causal relationship is the TIME ORDER of the two variables One thing cant cause another thing unless it precedes in time The variable doing the causing comes before the variable that is caused o AFTER empirical relationships and time order have been established a researcher must also establish that the observed relationship is not due to some unmeasured variable causally related to both of the others ALL THIRD VARIABLE EXPLANATIONS MUST BE ELIMINATED THE EXPERIMENTAL METHOD o Gather data directly from people but the experiment method seeks to gather this specific data under controlled conditions If an experiment is carefully executed a researcher is often able to make a case that all three of the criteria for documenting causal relationships have been met o MANIPULATION OF A KEY VARIABLE Once an experimenter has identified a variable usually called the independent variable that is thought to be a potential cause of another variable usually called the dependent variable The strategy is to manipulate the independent variable to create more than one experimental condition THE purpose of this manipulation is to be able to observe the impact of various levels of the independent variable on some dependent variable LAB TESTING EXPERIMENTS ON ANIMALS IN RELATION TO MANY DIFFERENT TOPICS o RANDOM ASSIGNMENT TO EXPERIMENTAL CONDITIONS RANDOM ASSIGNMENT of people or animals to experimental conditions Is crucial in experiments Random Assignment to experimental conditions makes the experimental groups equivalent at the beginning of the experiment o KEY TERMS MOOD MANAGEMENT THEORY The theory states that people deliberately use media messages to alter their moods REPLICATION Refers to the fact that the same result can be observed over and over again CONVERGENCE Refers to the fact that the use of different methods still leads to the same general conclusion EPIDEMIOLOGICAL APPROACH This approach is useful for studying the potential impact of media in the natural world is an observational science it doesn t seek to manipulate variables so there is no testing it seeks to find connections between variables by simply observing what is happening in the world outside of the laboratory META ANALYSIS Is a technique that doesn t involve making observations on a sample of people Instead this technique relies on