Content analysis is a valuable research tool for social scientists that unfortunately can prove challenging to teach to undergraduate students. Published classroom exercises designed to teach content analysis have thus far been predominantly envisioned as lengthy projects for upper-level courses. A brief and engaging exercise may be more…

This article addresses the under-theorization of visual techniques for social science research applications through the cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). The "problem" of "the visual" in research is given an ontological framing by highlighting the ways in which the use of visual techniques as research tools--designed…

A foreign scholar of African fiction may face a dilemma if he is not assisted in his research efforts with sufficient background information to understand the world of reality described by the novels. Libraries in advanced countries should aim at providing not only novels for study, but also related background materials. (VT)

Discusses the PsycINFO database as a source for articles on character analysis and psychological or psychoanalytical literary criticism. Serials included in the database that address psychoanalytical literary criticism are listed, and the types of articles and recurring themes found in the database are described. (six references) (CLB)

Educational researchers feel that "artistic" models of procedure might not yield material of great value. The most difficult problem is that the more researchers wish to tap the vivid description and deep human insight which the arts can generate, the less they can expect to achieve a neutral presentation of facts. (JN)

Intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate students who desire a useful research tool, this bibliography cites the works of and about British novelists, beginning with Joseph Conrad and terminating in 1950. The listings are selective with proper emphasis given to less celebrated but distinctive writers. A preface explaining the numerous…

This bibliography is intended as a convenient guide to scholarship in the field of Victorian fiction for graduate and advanced undergraduate students. The listings are selective, with emphasis on critical works published in the twentieth century. Contents include a preface explaining the guide, followed by the main sections: "Bibliographies,…

Designed to assess readers' evaluations of poems or other works of fiction, the Poetic Evaluation Rating Scale (PERS) is a set of 15 semantic differential scales. After each set of 11 poems, the reader checks a point along a line between two adjectives with opposite meanings (bi-polar adjectives). Each pair of adjectives is 1 of the 15 scales, all…

Designed to assess the maturity level of the novels which students read, the Novel Reading Maturity Scale (NRMS) is based on the notion that fiction of high quality is characterized by a number of themes or topics. The list of 22 topics in NRMS came from a survey of several guides on books for teenagers. To explore the reliability of the scale,…

Intended as an accessible resource for students researching America's greatest literary figures, this collection of essays about John Steinbeck's (1902-1968) work contains an in-depth biography and essays taken from a wide variety of sources. The essays are edited to accommodate the reading and comprehension levels of young adults; each essay is…

Intended as an accessible resource for students researching America's greatest literary figures, this collection of essays about Ernest Hemingway's (1899-1961) work contains an in-depth biography and essays taken from a wide variety of sources. The essays are edited to accommodate the reading and comprehension levels of young adults; each essay is…

Papers on art libraries presented at the 1986 International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) conference include: (1) "The Change of Illustrated Story Books in the Edo Period (1660-1880)" (Yaeko Kimura, Japan); (2) "History of Posters in Japan and the Present States of Their Documentation" (Itsuo Okubo, Japan); (3)…

Designed to assess analytically the quality of children's fictional stories, this study is composed of a set of twelve scales: structure, word usage, characterization, setting, point of view, conversation, detail, appeals to senses, values, ending, sentence structure, and situation. Each scale is scored 0, 1, or 2, with the highest possible score…