A study tested the applicability of gratifications research to magazines. Telephone surveys with 543 adults in a large western urban area ascertained their media usages and their agreement with 14 gratifications statements drawn from morphostatic research into the surveillance-diversion-personal identity triad in relation to newspaper and radio.…

Fourteen statements relating to the surveillance, diversion, and social interaction uses of media were drawn from a review of uses and gratification research and applied to the viewing of local and national early evening news and nighttime local news television programs. A telephone survey of 543 adults elicited information concerning demographics…

A study was undertaken to investigate, from a uses and gratifications perspective, the effects of serious television drama shown in a foreign country. Specifically, the study examined the impact of "Roots," a highly acclaimed American television drama on slavery, in Great Britain and provided comparisons with the findings of…

In addition to factors analyzed in previous media research, the following three new validity checks were examined in a study of the audience's perceived uses and gratifications: the effect of time differences between administrations in a study, a comparison of respondents who claim to be gratified with those who do not, and the link between media…

The question of whether adolescents turn to arcade video games for gratifications similar to those met by television viewing was investigated with 244 children 10 to 14 years old, who were attending a statewide summer sports camp. A questionnaire required subjects to rate the importance of 17 need statements and provide basic demographic…

Little is known about the roles of the family, kin and non-kin support networks in determining the use of social services by the elderly. An examination of the role of the formal and informal support systems to explain social service utilization by black and white older adults used path analytic procedures to test an explanatory model of…

Using a discrepancy model, this study contrasted the gratifications sought from television in general with the gratifications that respondents perceived they obtained, or would obtain, from public television (PTV). Information was gathered through telephone interviews of a random sample of heads of households, both viewers and nonviewers of public…

Questions concerning the relationship between gratifications sought (GS) and gratifications obtained (GO) were explored in a study of determinants of exposure to national network television evening news programs. The categories of gratifications, derived from a number of studies of television and political news, were (1) general information…

Uses and gratifications research involves a critical appraisal of conceptual and theoretical issues in mass communication and is concerned with what audience members do with the media. Activation theory understands people as active manipulators of their environment. (Activation refers to that level of psychological and physiological excitement an…

Based on data from eight studies that have contributed the bulk of research on adolescents' uses of and gratification from the medium of television, the following conclusions emerge: the time spent watching television peaks at age 12 and declines by 10% by age 18; television provides a means of escape, relaxation, entertainment, and relief from…

Random samples of 786 Indianapolis, Indiana, residents and 413 residents of The Netherlands were interviewed in a study of media-related gratifications. Although the Dutch and American cultures and media systems differ considerably, a number of striking similarities emerged in the findings of this study, including similarities for the relative…

A study was conducted to segment the mass media audience on the basis of basic needs and media satisfactions. Two hundred undergraduate journalism students completed lengthy questionnaires rating their media use before and during the New York newspaper strike of 1978, along with their basic needs, media satisfactions, and a variety of other…