COMM 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Scientific Method, Ethnography, Random Assignment

• School: UConn
• Department: Communication
• Course: COMM 1000
• Professor: Stephen Stifano( S I)

Document Summary

Lecture 2: studying communication as a science: january 30, 2019. The field of communication: humanistic approaches, rhetoric, use of language to persuade. In-depth interviews, ethnography, participants-observation: seeks to uncover patterns in communication behaviors via numbers, employ advanced statistical techniques and rigid testing to support/reject hypotheses, can work in the field or in the lab. The scientific method: ask a question or state a problem, formulate a hypothesis or research question, think through and refine the hypothesis or research question, design and conduct the observation, measurement, or experiment, analyze and interpret the data. Is objective: try to remove bias, checks and balances built in to scientific method and peer review. Is logical: conclusions have to be consistent and rational. Is public: report data and publish it. Content analysis: systematic analysis of the content of communication messages, purposes, describes frequency of a behavior, compares behavior types/rates across different contexts.