Dennis W. Jeffers

Life stage and motives for television use

Do motives for using TV vary by viewers age? Mass communication literature suggests that TV plays an important role in the life of younger and older persons in American society, but has not investigated how motives for viewing vary by age of the viewer or what needs are satisfied by viewing. A systematic random sample of telephone households in the Carbondale, DeSoto, and Murphysboro area of Southern Illinois provided 140 interviews with adults aged eighteen to eighty-seven. Life stage was related to five motives for using TV (to learn things, to forget, to overcome loneliness, to pass time when bored, and to find something to talk about). All but the forget/bored motive were positively correlated with age.

Redefining the role of the company magazine

The authors of this article contend that the company publications field is moving into an era of “measurement and management” wherein those who edit company publications will be responsible for setting specific goals and objectives for their publications, and then, measuring their effectiveness to determine if the objectives are being achieved. To test the effectiveness of company communications, the authors propose a structural model that can be used to help solve communication problems by raising the communications function out of the “soft” arena of corporate affairs.

Discovering media-value associations

In this article, Dennis Jeffers asks if different forms of the mass media, because of thier unique nature, lend themselves to association with different values. His attempt to formulate an answer to that question took the form of a media habits survey of students at Central Michigan University, in which they were also asked to indicate which medium they associated with the words or phrases read to them by the interviewer. The results clearly showed that people do associate different values with different media. The author suggests that this finding can be of enormous use to public relations practioners who design persuasive messages for special-interest audiences.

TV Police and Family Programs as Reality to Schizophrenic-Labeled Persons

b This article summarizes findings from openand closed-ended interviews with persons labeled “schizophrenics in an acute phase.” Interview results are compared to data gathered using the same instruments in telephone interviews with respondents from nonlabeled community samples.! In open-ended interviews in late 1978 and early 1979, we inquired into schizophrenics’ perceptions of television. Responses often indicated a high degree of perceived TV realism. Next, a closedended instrument was administered, based

A projective art test for determining the degree of schizophrenics′ perceived reality of television☆

Abstract The visual medium of television is the dominant mass medium used by residents in a state-supported mental health center. The extent to which residents perceive the content of TV to be real may be an important intervening variable in the eventual use of TV content by the resident in his or her own life, as well as for therapeutic purposes. A traditional pencil-and-paper measure of the perceived reality of TV is not wholly satisfactory for schizophrenics in a chronic state. An easily scored experimental projective drawing test is explained which has promise as a measurement approach to determine the persons perceived reality of television. The results for schizophrenics are compared to those for a matched sample of non-institutionalized persons.