J 201 Lecture Notes - Parents Music Resource Center, Caillou, Focus Group
2 Jul 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
J 201 Media Research, Research in the News, Media Theories
The Reporting of Science
●Does the researcher or expert receive funding that would create a conflict of interest?
○ Ex: Coke pays health experts to say that soda is a healthy snack
●What do other researchers believe?
○ meta studies = studies about studies
○ any study should be peer reviewed
○ ex: coke and violent video games
●What were the study’s limitations?
○ why access to screens is lowering kids social skills
■ 2 groups of 50 6th grade students
■ one group spent 5 days at a nature came (no access to screens)
■ one group continued with their normal lives (normal screen access)
■ both took a pre and post test to measure their ability to identify nonverbal
emotional cues
○ Experimental Design
■ substantiate cause-and-effect hypotheses
■ Weakness: they are often conducted in the unnatural conditions of a
laboratory environment
■ ex of strength and weakness of experimental design
■ the Asch experiment
■ displays group conformity
■ weakness: conducted in an unnatural lab condition
■ strength: we can look at cause and effect
■ if you asked someone if they would conform to the
wrong answer they would usually say no
■ 75% of participants conformed to the wrong answer at least
once
Surveys
● They can be used to generalize findings to larger society (if constructed well)
● They only show correlations versus causation
● Characteristics that affect survey quality:
○ Who commissioned the survey?
○ How good was the wording of the questions and answers?
■ PR tactic in politics is biased polling (ask questions which shape politicians)
■ ask a Q in the way where you’ll get the “right answer” (the answer you want)
○ How large was the sample?
■ sometimes hard to know if it was a random sample
■ does it have info about how many people were included in the study
○ How were participants chosen?
Qualitative Research: Focus Group
● 12 year olds on social media
○ 10 girls, chosen in non scientific manner
○ reporter was super open with how non scientific his focus group was
● Interview & Focus group strengths:
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
J 201 media research, research in the news, media theories. Ex: coke pays health experts to say that soda is a healthy snack. Why access to screens is lowering kids social skills. 2 groups of 50 6th grade students. One group spent 5 days at a nature came (no access to screens) One group continued with their normal lives (normal screen access) Both took a pre and post test to measure their ability to identify nonverbal emotional cues. Weakness: they are often conducted in the unnatural conditions of a laboratory environment. Ex of strength and weakness of experimental design. Weakness: conducted in an unnatural lab condition. Strength: we can look at cause and effect. If you asked someone if they would conform to the wrong answer they would usually say no. 75% of participants conformed to the wrong answer at least once. They can be used to generalize findings to larger society (if constructed well)
