Blackwell Reference Online

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Empirical communication and media research attempts to translate reality into data by means of measurement. To insure →  reliability and →  validity , this process is guided by rules. In the case of quantitative research (→  Quantitative Methodology ), the rules tend to be standardized in order to keep results comparable across different instances of measurement (→  Measurement Theory ). These standardized measurements can make use of the simple gauges employed in physics or engineering only occasionally, e.g., when the length of a newspaper article is determined with a ruler or the time people watch a TV program by a clock. Many concepts related to communication and media phenomena are complex in nature, for they refer to people's knowledge, intentions, emotions, or behavior. Thus they require more complex instruments for measurement, including different indicators (“latent variables”; Black 1999 , 211; see also Bryman 2004 , 66–69) to cover the multifaceted aspects of these concepts and to provide an indirect measurement for concepts that cannot be measured directly ( Sullivan 2001 , 159). The procedure of “scaling” is used to quantify phenomena that cannot be counted directly ( Jacoby 2004 , 999). Empirical research draws upon several types of scales that describe general principles of how to collect data by multiple-indicator measures. Four important types of scales will ... log in or subscribe to read full text