A Content Analysis of Three Mass Communication Research Traditions: Social Science, Interpretive Studies, and Critical Analysis

Abstract

This study assessed the extent to which researchers conform to the assumptions associated with the social scientific, interpretive, and critical traditions of inquiry. For each tradition, a set of ten variables was examined: ontology, epistemology, nature of the research question, theory, hypotheses, sampling, data collection, verification, data analysis, and generalization. Content analyses of 245 journal articles indicate that researchers conform highly to expectations associated with ontology, epistemology, data collection, and data analysis, but less so with the remaining variables. These data suggest that scholars are strongly guided by the expectations associated with these traditions. Occasional deviations suggest some convergence of attributes.