Communication Research

Explanations for information seeking are customarily sought on the level of personal characteristics such as education or uncertainty. This study em ploys a coorientation model in which explanation for communication be havior is achieved on the level of the person's interpersonal or social relations. The power of coorientational variables is tested and compared with the power of commonly used individual characteristics in predicting amounts and types of information sought by buyers of cosmetics.

This study investigated the relationship between gratifications sought (GS) from television news and gratifications obtained (GO) from network evening news programs Each GS correlated moderately to strongly with its corre sponding GO for the respondent's most-watched program. Correlations between each GS and noncorresponding GOs were generally much lower. In addition, the degree of dependence on a particular program was posi tively related to the strength of the GS versus GO relationship. The differ ences in the GS and GO factor structures appear attributable to medium and program content characteristics. The findings indicate considerable promise for a sought versus obtained conceptualization of uses and gratifi cations.

This article addresses several elaborations and specifications of Gerbner and Gross' (1976) cultivation hypothesis: that heavy television viewers incorporate biases present in television content into their own construc tions of reality. Subjects were 1280 children from grades 2, 5, 8, and 11 in Perth, Western Australia who answered questions designed to tap their perceptions of violence and "meanness" in society. The cultivation relation ship between viewing and beliefs was replicated with these Australian schoolchildren, but only for adolescents, suggesting that the integration of discrete television events into social reality beliefs requires cognitive skills not available to or unused by younger children. Division of children's viewing into different content types indicated that beliefs about violence stemmed most clearly from crime-adventure programs and cartoons, but perceiving a mean world is related more globally to all television viewing.

Change over time is a basic property of human communication that needs more careful treatment in theory and research. But the designs most com mon in communication research today are incapable of generating data that support theoretical interpretations of change over time. The article develops and provides evidence for two criteria that a research design must meet in order to provide full information on change over time. It also examines the use of the criteria in designing new studies and in assessing past research.