SMPA 1050- Final Exam Guide - Comprehensive Notes for the exam ( 27 pages long!)

• School: GWU
• Department: School of Media &Public Affairs
• Course: SMPA 1050
• Professor: Professor Sean Aday

Document Summary

Internal validity -how well an experiment/research study is carried out without there being any error/systematic bias. External validity -extent to which the research results can be generalized to other people-is the study you do generalizible to the broader population you"re interested in. Three major research design approaches used in study of media and media effects. Content analysis making qualitative data quantitative-interpreting and encoding textual information and material ex-census data and sample studies pew research. Generalizable, sample survey-assuming we have properly sampled we can make claims about a population. Help us understand and describe the population we"re interested in. Disadvantages of surveys -cannot make strong causal claims evidence about relationships tends to be correlational not about causal relationships. Arguments: how to do census democrats how to do census sampling techniques-minority communities are being systematically undercounted. Representative-must be a random sample in order to be able to make a claim about the population generalizibility-(external validity)