Measurement Effects in Comparing Voter Learning from Television News and Campaign Advertisements

Abstract

Studies of media effects on political knowledge have used exposure and attention to measure television watching and confidence and accuracy to measure knowledge. These studies have employed a variety of control strategies. Although measurements and control strategies are known to affect the magnitude of the resulting independent-dependent correlation, this study investigates whether they can affect research outcomes in any other way. The topic of substance, which we use as an example, is whether voters learn more from political advertisements than from television news. The results indicate that different methods can lead to different, or even opposite, conclusions.