"How do young audiences play with the cultural spectacle offered by reality shows like Big Brother? How does interactive media influence learning the process in educational and everyday settings? How can corporate communicators address their ethical commitment more effectively to the general public?
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And is there a link between television viewing and violent behaviour? Researching Audiences is a practical hands-on guide to the main types of empirical fieldwork that have established themselves in academic, policy and commercial research. It will help you explore what audience members do with the media, how they make sense of the media, and how the media may influence social affairs from the micro to the macro level. The book introduces and discusses four complementary key approaches to empirical research: Media ethnography, reception research, survey research, and experimental research." (Publisher description)
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"The manual is organised to follow the major phases of the monitoring process chronologically. Its first aim is to present and discuss a possible way of developing a research instrument appropriate for the content analysis of the newspaper press. References throughout the text relate the monitoring
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conducted as a part of manual preparation. The introduction provides elementary information about that research. The second section of the manual deals with the project design. Setting up a monitoring mission is a complex process, which includes methodological considerations that have to be worked out in the initial phase. Along with project objectives, it deals with the formulation of research questions, material selection, sampling and the development of coding instruments. The third section refers to organisation of the monitoring mission itself. It emphasises the importance of training, setting inter-coding reliability procedures and the pilot study. The data collection discussion concludes with control and data preparation for processing. Data processing is a focus of the fourth section. It indicates how raw data is transformed into research findings, and explains procedures of cross-referencing. Once processed, data is ready for interpreting and reporting. The final stage of the research is the report along with a finalised presentation of the major findings in an appropriate form. Its structure follows from the research purposes, and if necessary, there can be more than one report from the project." (Structure of the manual, page 13)
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"The purposes of this checklist are to guide evaluators in determining when qualitative methods are appropriate for an evaluative inquiry and factors to consider (1) to select qualitative approaches that are particularly appropriate for a given evaluation’s expected uses and answer the evaluationâ
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€™s questions, (2) to collect high quality and credible qualitative evaluation data, and (3) to analyze and report qualitative" (Page 1)
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"L'Analyse du discours est une nouvelle discipline apparue dans les années soixante, et qui se trouve aujourd'hui au cœur de l'ensemble des sciences humaines et sociales. Son objet, le «discours», n'est rien d'autre que le langage lui-même, considéré comme activité en contexte, construisant
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du sens et du lien social. Cette discipline carrefour s'est imposée progressivement. Et d'abord aux chercheurs qui rencontrent le langage sous ses divers aspects : comme phénomène interactif de communication et d'influence, de production et de maintien des systèmes de croyance, de construction de la personnalité, etc. Mais elle s'est imposée aussi aux professionnels qui étudient comment manier le langage à des fins d'information, de persuasion ou de séduction. Enfin l'analyse du discours est devenue indispensable aujourd'hui aux formateurs travaillant en didactique de la langue, maternelle ou étrangère, et qui élaborent des méthodes d'analyse grammaticale ou textuelle, comme aux enseignants de toutes disciplines à qui elle permet de renouveler les pratiques traditionnelles du commentaire. Les auteurs de ce dictionnaire (le premier du genre) ont eu le souci de proposer un véritable outil de travail qui couvre l'essentiel de ce champ, et respecte sa diversité. Ils ont fait appel aux meilleurs spécialistes des nombreux courants qui composent aujourd'hui cette discipline pour offrir au lecteur un guide conceptuel facilement consultable, bien documenté et clairement exposé." (Description de la maison d'édition)
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"The objective of the household survey is to measure the transformational development indicators on nutrition, immunization, education, water, diarrhoea management, household resilience, poorest households and HIV/AIDS. Development programs should aim to be able to use this survey method with a leve
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l of precision and accuracy for measuring these eight indicators. This volume of the Transformational Development Indicators (TDI) field guide explains, step by step, how to design and implement the TDI household survey. Each step in the process is clearly numbered to assist staff in using this guide. Chapters 1-5 describe the actual process of survey implementation, which includes defining the survey and area to be surveyed, preparation of the questionnaire, determination of sample size and the selection of the sample. There are also sections on data collection and bias inherent with this method. Chapter 6 describes the steps involved in data analysis using the software provided by the Development Resources Team (DeRT). The appendices include additional resources that may be useful for training and learning about household survey method, random sampling. It includes sample questionnaires, as well as a glossary and bibliography of survey literature." (Introduction, page 7)
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"This book aims to provide a brief account of some of the ways in which social scientists can incorporate visual images (of various kinds) into their research, together with a discussion of why they might wish to. The emphasis is very much on the use of visual materials as one among several research
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methods that may be employed by a social researcher during the course of an investigation, rather than a focus on the visual for its own sake. I assume that readers already have or are acquiring the skills to devise a research project that is valid within the context of their discipline, but may not have thought of adding a visual dimension. Those who are already experienced visual researchers and are seeking to add a sociological dimension to their work should probably look elsewhere, as they will probably find what I have to say basic or naive with regard to the visual and opaque or elliptical with regard to the sociological. While basic, and intended as a simple and practical guide for students, academic and non-academic researchers new to the fields of visual anthropology and visual sociology, this is not a technical guide to button-pressing on video cameras and the like." (Preface)
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"The publication was released on the occasion of a community radio management and training course, conducted by the Radio Nederland Training Centre in 2001. The course aimed to "deepen participant's knowledge of research and provide new information, promote emotional work by reflecting on feelings a
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nd attitudes on research, build skills so participants are supposed to be confident in carrying out tasks and activities in audience research after the course." Hence, this is a well structured, concrete guideline for the implementation of three-day workshops, including suggestions for time lines, practice exercises and explanations of methods like in-depth interviews, focus groups and the corresponding, commonly used creative techniques, eg, role-playing games, collages and word association. The focus is on audience research for community radio stations. The guide is more useful for station managers and others who want to train their staff effectively in qualitative and quantitative research methods, but who themselves already have some knowledge about both, than for those who are looking for a research manual or extensive research introductions." (commbox)
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