"The purposes of the present study are: (1) to examine the nature of the modernization process among peasants in one less developed country, Colombia, and (2) to determine the cross-cultural validity of these findings in other of the less developed nations. Peasants are important subjects of study b
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y social scientists because they constitute a majority of the population of most less developed nations. In this book modernization is viewed as essentially a communication process; modernizing message must reach the peasant via such communication channels as the mass media, change agents, or the villager's trips to cities. The methodological approach to theory construction in the present work is middle-range analysis. Data were gathered from peasants in six Colombian villages varying in degree of modernization; comparable data-gathering procedures and measures were used in two studies in India and one in Kenya in order to provide cross-cultural tests of generalization. Functional literacy was measured among the Colombian peasants by asking each respondent to read a six-word sentence in Spanish. Highly positive relationships were obtained between functional literacy scores and (1) self-defined literacy, and (2) years of formal education. These findings have been confirmed with data from a sample of 702 Indian peasants, whose responses lend cross-cultural credence to the conclusions." (ERIC databse)
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"This is a study of mass media exposure of peasants in five Colombian villages. It relates this exposure to prior literacy, education, social status, age, and cosmopoliteness, and measures its consequences in terms of empathy, innovativeness, political knowledge, achievement, and aspiration." (Abstr
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act)
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