Blackwell Reference Online

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Modern research methods for social/behavioral change reflect a tension between collecting data at the individual level while making inferences at macro-levels such as health-care systems, communities, and nations. This tension becomes more palpable when measuring the concerns of historically underserved, difficult-to-reach populations, those suffering the greatest inequalities in access to information, civic participation, and, in particular, health-care. Research questions are explored by focusing on multiple levels of analysis, multidisciplinary approaches, targeted methods/measures, flexible measures of “community,” and converging methodologies for maximizing evaluation validity. Communication studies often rely on national samples of self-reports on personal →  attitudes and values, drawing conclusions at the individual level (→  Sampling, Random ). Despite the risk of “ecological” or “atomistic” fallacies, creative comparisons of different levels of analysis , especially at the city level, can illuminate previously unconfirmed connections between communication and social change. For example, differences in community-level demographics or social structure have been linked to variations in major newspaper coverage, often called a “community structure” approach, sometimes revealing a “guard dog” relationship, in which media perpetuate existing social and political arrangements, ... log in or subscribe to read full text