Newer is not necessarily better a reexamination of affective learning measurement

The instrument commonly employed in instructional communication to measure affective learning was subjected to tests of its construct validity as a measure of higher‐order affective learning. The results indicate the instrument is a satisfactory instrument for this purpose. Newer measures of higher‐order affective learning were found to be highly associated with the older measure. Teacher evaluation measures were found to be distinct from both the newer and the older affective learning measures. The construct validity of the commonly used affective learning instrument is good.     

A Defense of Publishing Nonsignificant (ns) Results

An argument is advanced for the propositions that a lack of statistically significant findings does not automatically justify rejecting a scientific article for publication or mean that the findings are necessarily uninformative. Systematically declining publication for nonsignificant results leads to negative consequences that include distorting scientific literatures, making hypotheses and theories less falsifiable, depriving meta-analyses of an accurate sample of prior findings, and encouraging questionable research practices. Providing effect sizes and confidence intervals can make findings more informative, regardless of whether the finding is p < .05.     

A rules‐based study of television's role in the construction of social reality

A qualitative analysis of one couple's conversational uses of mediated content is presented. Observations spanned a two‐year period. Data were categorized according to usage type and then examined from Lull's (1981) rules persective.     

Media violence research: Interpreting the findings

The pages which follow are an attempt to stand back and assess what we know about the effects of media violence in an effort to sort into a usable pattern the results of hundreds of reported studies. Timothy P. Meyer is assistant professor of speech in Mass Communications at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; James A. Anderson is associate professor of radio‐television and director of the Broadcast Research Center at Ohio University, Athens.     

A Methodology for Calculating Prestige Ranks of Academic Journals in Communication: A More Inclusive Alternative to Citation Metrics

The problem of how to rank academic journals in the communication field (human interaction, mass communication, speech, and rhetoric) is one of practical importance to scholars, university administrators, and librarians, yet there is no methodology that covers the field's journals comprehensively and objectively. This article reports a new ranking methodology based in empirical criteria. The new system relates independent measures of the prestige of the field's doctoral departments to information about where faculty members from those departments have published scholarly articles. This new approach identifies the field's most influential journals as those that more frequently publish the work of the field's top scholars and programs as perceived by their peers. This system was used to compute prestige weights (P-weights) for 65 communication journals. P-weights were found to be strongly correlated with ISI Web of Science journal impact factor scores and can be used to identify an overall prestige hierarchy for communication journals as well as prestige rankings by subject specialty.     

An Opportunity,Not a Crisis: How Google Is Changing the Individual and the Information Profession

ABSTRACT

This article explores some of the key impacts that Google and new technologies such as Web 2.0 have had on the way people see information and information professionals and presents the argument that much of what is typically seen as negative about Google is, in fact, positive.     

Optimal Results: What Libraries Need to Know About Google and Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization, or the practice of designing a web site so that it rises to the top of the results page when users search for particular keywords or phrases, has become so prevalent on the modern web that it has a significant influence on Google search results. This article examines the techniques used by search engine optimization practitioners, the difference between “white hat” and “black hat” optimization tactics, and why it is important for library staff to understand these techniques and their impact on search engine results pages. It also looks at ways that library staff can help their users develop awareness of the factors that influence search results and how to better assess the quality and relevance of results listings.     

Power Lines: The Rhetoric of Maps as Social Change in the Post–Cold War Landscape

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of state socialism in Eastern and Central Europe, cartographers were faced with choices on how the new post–Cold War political landscape would be mapped. One such group called the Pluto Project had been producing atlases since 1981 with a progressive point of view about the nature of state power in the Cold War. This essay examines two of the Pluto Project's atlases as they function to identify a radical cartographic style that animates the social control of space by subverting traditional cartographic forms and defying scientific expectations and standards.     

Are Environmental Professors Unbalanced? Evidence From the Field

Most outcomes assessment in higher education has focused on content knowledge or skills development; however, attitudinal change is also a legitimate focus of assessment. We use the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) to test whether courses designed to meet the same university environmental literacy requirement changed student environmental attitudes, and whether these changes resulted from instructor and/or course-content effects. We found student environmental attitudes did change significantly but in different directions depending upon who taught the course. The ability to measure such changes adds to the discussion in the environmental education community on the desired nature of attitudinal change and of the responsibilities of higher education instructors.