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…

A literature review of communications, psychological, physiological and other sociobehavioral research literature reveals a number of paradoxes regarding the emphasis by information gatekeepers, media, and audiences on messages that are negative, critical, pessimistic, conflict-and-tension-producing, skeptical, punitive, threatening,…

Providing comprehensive services for the elderly in local communities presents planners and potential users with a complex set of problems. The development of new or expanded service to the elderly was examined within an ecologically informed resource dependency model to assess the effect on service expansion of organizational maintenance factors…

If human service personnel are to serve clients effectively, they must understand the condition of human need and the objects of need which satisfy the condition. While definitions of need vary according to academic discipline, a review of literature in ten academic areas revealed that need as a human condition is based upon the existence of…

Results of an illustrative study emphasize the importance of the images that the elderly and the general public have of a rural community's services for senior citizens. These images help to identify ways in which programs and services can be tailored to the requirements of the elderly. Public support for political action that bears directly upon…

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…

Three factors in the reader have a generalized effect on all perception, including reading: competence, purpose, and set. Competence involves applying past learning to new learning through transference, understanding the conventions of different types of texts, and transforming the text through the perceptual process into a new entity. Competent…

In order to study the influence of need for orientation and media gratifications on media use and media effects in political communication, two previous surveys were studied to compare the causal modeling approach and the contingent conditions approach. In the first study, 339 personal interviews were conducted with registered voters during a…

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…

Academic delay of gratification (ADOG) refers to students' postponement of immediately available opportunities to satisfy impulses in favor of pursuing academic goals that are temporally remote but ostensibly more valuable. This important form of self-regulation was studied among college students to determine how it serves to sustain effort over…

This paper presents a study conducted to explore the relationship between perceived security, affiliation, self esteem, autonomy, and self actualization, and degree of job satisfaction as reported by urban high school teachers. The control variables used include teachers' age, gender, marital status, length of service, salary, family income,…

The effect on productivity on different types of collegial interaction among faculty were studied with attention to institutional type, disciplinary affiliation, orientation to teaching versus research, and career age. Collegial interaction was defined in terms of the reciprocal fulfillment of needs or exchange of services that occur in the course…

The research paper examines how women's relative preferences for market work and home work are effected by three transitions: first marriage, first birth, and marital dissolution. The hypothesis was that all three events should affect market work preference by changing levels of available resources, such as time and money, and by changing the…

Data from 464 adults were analyzed to provide a more heuristic paradigm for mass communication uses and gratifications research in a study of the interactive nature of television viewing motivations, viewing behavior, and attitude gratifications. Factor analysis located five principal television viewing motivations: passing time, information,…

The importance of human needs during the retrospective peacetime in 1990 and the Persian Gulf War in 1991 was examined among 564 college students in the United States. Results of factor analyses showed that during peacetime, two factors (higher-order and lower-order needs) were identified. During the war, all needs were rated as more important and…