Masters Theses

Date of Award

5-1996

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Communication

Major Professor

C. Edward Caudill

Committee Members

James A. Crook, Paul Ashdown

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine how residents of Campbell County, Tenn., use and rate their schools and media.

A stratified random sample of 435 residents was interviewed by telephone on weekday evenings from May 16 through June 5, 1995. The surveyors asked to speak to the person 18 years of age or older who had had the most recent birthday in order to assure random selection of the household's adult respondents.

The survey instrument contained questions taken largely from a 1982 study, School-Community Relations in Buncombe County, N.C.: How Residents Rate Public Education and Obtain School Information, which in turn had used questions from a 1979 study, The Origin of Ohio Households' Opinions About Public Education. In addition, a few questions used in Gallup polls measuring attitudes toward schools also were used.

The study looked specifically at six research questions:

  1. How satisfied are readers with the LaFollette Press's coverage of school news?
  2. What other sources do Campbell County residents use to learn about school news?
  3. How do Campbell County residents grade the newspaper and other media on coverage of school news?
  4. What are the attitudes of Campbell Countians toward their schools?
  5. What are the attitudes of Campbell Countians toward schools on the national level?
  6. What do Campbell Countians consider to be the biggest problems in their schools?

Findings, which were compared to the North Carolina study and, where appropriate, to Gallup, revealed that Campbell County residents rely heavily on the mass media for information about their schools, are more satisfied with the amount of school information they get from the media than those in the North Carolina study, but still would prefer to get school information directly from school sources. In both Campbell County and Buncombe County, the most often mentioned source used for learning about the schools was the local newspaper.

Campbell Countians gave consistently higher grades to their media than the Buncombe County respondents. At the same time, Campbell Countians rated their local schools much worse than the nation's in general, contrary to the findings of the North Carolina, Ohio, Gallup and other studies.

By far the largest school problem cited by Campbell Countians could be summarized in one word: money. Nearly half of the respondents mentioned issues that could be categorized as financial inadequacies.

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