A study was conducted as part of a program to develop and test an individual level communications model. The model proposes that audience members bring to communications situations a set of learned cognitive processing strategies that produce cognitive structural representations of information in memory to facilitate the meeting of the various…

The results of a study measuring the Central Life Interests (CLI) of public school teachers are presented. Elementary and secondary teachers responded to a questionnaire rating their attitudes as being job oriented, nonjob oriented, or as having no preference. Four subscales measured the attachment felt toward the informal social relations among…

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…

Implications of Maslow's Need Hierarchy are considered in this paper, along with possible qualifications to the suggested structure and potential effects of superimposing relative deprivation theory onto the hierarchy as an approach to adult education. The interfacing of needs and alternative structurings is discussed in terms of two theories: (1)…

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 exploitation of adjunct faculty is a disgrace to the academy. The prominence and indispensability of part-time faculty is obvious, yet they are rarely acknowledged or compensated for their mandatory contributions to higher education. This paper seeks to explicate how adjunct faculty are at risk and disempowered by a lack of respect…

Alcoholism research has independently focused on background characteristics and alcohol-related expectations, e.g., social and physical pleasure, reduced tension, and increased assertiveness, as important variables in identifying high risk individuals. To assess the utility of alcohol reinforcement expectations as predictors of drinking patterns,…

Attribution theorists have argued that if an intrinsically motivated activity is extrinsically reinforced, the activity will be devalued and extinguished when the reward is removed. Hypothesizing that activities performed for their instrumental outcome are valued less than activities not so externally oriented, and that activities performed for…

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…

This paper reports part of the results from a three-stage panel study of the Fall 1976 presidential campaigns; 1,927 interviews were conducted in all, 594 occurring in the week prior to the election. Results indicated that voters did not change their voting intentions significantly during the fall campaigns; that they did change the certainty with…

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…

Research suggests that higher level jobs are more likely to contain the essential job characteristics needed to cue achievement motives in high achievement workers. A comparison of university administrators and maintenance workers confirmed that the higher the level of the occupation, the higher the morale of the worker. However, no significant…

The relationship between education and job satisfaction has not been sufficiently well documented to qualify as unquestionable. Published research on the subject either fails to adequately assess the influence of education on job satisfaction or is too occupationally and/or geographically limited to form the basis for generalization. To examine on…

This report compares the relative adequacy of metropolitan and nonmetropolitan household income in Wisconsin. In 1981, 1,133 respondents completed the Wisconsin Basic Needs Survey, covering income, assets, debts, and taxes, filled out two-week diaries of food expenditures and small recurring expenses, and answered questions on perceived income…

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…