COMM 102 Lecture 6: comm101lecture6

• School: U of M
• Department: Communication Studies
• Course: COMM 102
• Professor: Nojin Kwak

Document Summary

Variable: a phenomenon/event that we observe, whose attributes vary across individuals. To which more than one value can be assigned. Very little attention, moderate attention, very close attention: watching action adventure programs. 1 hour per day, 2 hours per day, etc: committing violent crimes, once per year, twice per year, etc. Independent variable: cause i. e. hours spent watching tv, dependent variable. E ect: consequence or outcome, dv is caused by iv i. e. frequency of aggressive behavior. Establishing causality: media e ects, whether media messages bring about some changes (or reinforcement) in peoples thoughts, attitudes, emotions, behaviors, and so on. Testing the existence of a causal relationship between iv and. Three criteria necessary for claiming a causal relationship. The presumed causes (iv) and the presumed e ect (dv) must covary (correlation/association) association/correlation. The presumed cause must precede the presumed e ect in time (temporal order of variables) Temporal order established: alternative explanations are eliminated.