COMM 400 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Public Knowledge
5 Feb 2019
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Communication research focuses on messages-- messages sent interpersonally, within or between groups, organizations, cultures/societies. The key is communication must be linked to message and meaning. The process of testing a theory is straightforward. Choosing an appropriate theory to help explain important aspects of the research topic. A hypothesis is the derived from the theory and the accuracy of that prediction is tested in a study. First explain why they chose their topic. Articulate the research question or statement that guided their investigation. We would not want to conclude that a drug cured a disease on the basis of a single study, or two or three, and the same is true when attempting to establish causal principles for communication behavior. Variables can also be differentiated with regard to the values researches assign to them or the kind of scale used to measure them. Ordered variables can be assigned numerical values that indicate how much of the concept is present.
