types of research in journalism

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5 common research designs: A quick primer for journalists

If you're not sure how a cross-sectional analysis differs from a randomized, controlled clinical trial, keep reading. We offer a broad overview of five of the most common research designs journalists encounter.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by Denise-Marie Ordway, The Journalist's Resource July 9, 2021

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/home/research-designs-types-primer/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

Journalists who read and cover academic research know scholars take a variety of approaches to investigate a problem, trend or intervention. But if you’re not familiar with research methods, it can be difficult to know what scientists mean when they say they have conducted, for example, a cross-sectional analysis or a randomized, controlled clinical trial.

Researchers often do not explain why they picked a particular study design or how it differs from others they could have chosen to interrogate the topic at hand.

We created this brief explainer to offer journalists a broad overview of five of the most common research designs they will encounter: longitudinal, cross-sectional, correlational, experimental and clinical trials. We’d like to point out that some research falls into more than one category — a study can be both longitudinal and correlational, for instance.

It’s also worth noting these five study types generally are considered quantitative research , which employs a mathematical analysis of the data collected to try to explain what’s being observed. Qualitative research , on the other hand, usually examines some aspect of human behavior by observing and interacting with people and their environments.

——————————————

Longitudinal study

Here’s what it is: This type of study allows scholars to follow the same group of people over time, whether a few dozen people over a few weeks or millions of people over decades. Researchers monitor and measure changes through observation or by analyzing information gathered at regular intervals, often with surveys or in-person interviews.

Keep in mind: Longitudinal studies can be helpful for collecting data on a single topic or a wide array of topics across time. Some of these studies follow groups of people from childhood into and through adulthood, asking questions about their health, employment, relationship status and opinions on certain issues along the way.

An example: The Pre-Elementary Education Longitudinal Study followed a nationally representative sample of children with disabilities as they progressed from preschool into their early elementary school years. The study offers insights into special education services available to young children at the time, the family characteristics of kids with disabilities and the academic performance of students with disabilities during this stage of their lives.

Cross-sectional study

Here’s what it is: A cross-sectional study provides a snapshot of a group of people at a point in time. Researchers use cross-sectional studies to examine such things as U.S. doctors’ attitudes toward euthanasia or the prevalence of soda consumption among women over age 40. These studies often allow scholars to compare subgroups of the study population — for instance, comparing soda consumption among women over age 40 according to their race, country of origin, household income and education level.

Keep in mind: Because a cross-sectional study captures data from a single moment in time, its timing can affect results. People might behave or answer questions differently after a major event such as a natural disaster or international controversy.

An example: A paper published in the BMJ Open medical journal in 2019 examines the characteristics that police reporting symptoms of professional burnout have in common. The authors of “ Associations Between Shift Work Characteristics, Shift Work Schedules, Sleep and Burnout in North American Police Officers: A Cross-Sectional Study ,” learned that of the 3,140 North American police officers who participated in the study, those working irregular schedules were most at risk of burnout.

Correlational study

Here’s what it is: Scientists perform correlational studies to determine whether a relationship exists between two or more variables — weather and indoor air quality, for instance, or exercise and mental acuity. Correlation can tell researchers if the relationship is positive, meaning the variables being studied increase or decrease together, or whether it is negative, meaning one variable decreases as the other increases.

This research design can provide some insight into how strong that relationship is. However, scientists must use more advanced statistical analysis methods such as regression to determine the strength and nature of the relationship. They also can extrapolate data to make predictions about how the variables will behave in each other’s presence over time or as conditions change.

Keep in mind: Just because scholars find a relationship exists between two variables does not mean one variable causes the other to behave in a certain way.Establishing causation requires additional research and analysis. Researchers can use an experimental study design, which we explain below, to determine causal relationships between variables in a controlled environment.

An example: An article that appeared last year in Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies looks at the relationship between social media use and the mental health of Latinos living in southern California.  In the paper, “ Social Media Use and Depression, Anxiety, and Stress in Latinos: A Correlational Study ,” researchers find that social media “is a significant predictor of stress but not of depression or anxiety” for study participants and that the impact of social media varied depending on how long they and their families had lived in the U.S.

Experimental study

Here’s what it is: Experimental research, which employs one of the most rigorous research designs, is best suited for examining cause-and-effect relationships. When conducting this type of study, scholars typically introduce an intervention of some sort into a controlled environment that allows scholars to isolate and investigate the effect of the intervention. The intervention could be a new program, product or procedure. Researchers also can use an experimental study to test how people react to stimuli such as violence in news videos or changes to food labels.

Keep in mind: Often in experimental studies, researchers create a control group for comparison purposes. The control group will be similar to the group testing the intervention but won’t be exposed to the intervention. By including the control group, researchers can more accurately determine whether the intervention led to changes.

An example: A study published in 2019 in Political Behavior features three experiments aimed at gauging how white voters in the U.S. respond to seeing Democratic presidential candidates courting Latino voters. As the author explains in “ The New White Flight?: The Effects of Political Appeals to Latinos on White Democrats ,” white voters viewed presidential campaign ads or read news headlines about the election and then responded to questions about how they felt about the candidates, including who they planned to support in the election.

Clinical trial

Here’s what it is: If scientists want to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of a health-related intervention, they conduct clinical trials. “Clinical trials are research studies performed in people that are aimed at evaluating a medical, surgical, or behavioral intervention ,” according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “They are the primary way that researchers find out if a new treatment, like a new drug or diet or medical device (for example, a pacemaker) is safe and effective in people.”

Clinical trials of new treatments have four phases, beginning with testing the safety of a new treatment and ending with monitoring its use after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration licenses and approves it.

Keep in mind: Randomized controlled trials are widely considered the gold standard in research, but they’re also expensive . For these studies, patients are randomly assigned to groups that usually are the same or similar in size. One group receives or participates in the intervention. The group that serves as the control receives a placebo or participates in an activity unrelated to the intervention being tested. Researchers compare what happened with the intervention group against what they learned about the control group.

An example: Researchers tested whether tailored messaging would encourage U.S. mothers who expressed concerns about the human papillomavirus vaccine to get their adolescent children immunized. Their findings are described in “ Tailored Messages Addressing Human Papillomavirus Vaccination Concerns Improves Behavioral Intent Among Mothers: A Randomized Controlled Trial ,” published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in August 2020.

If you found this explainer helpful, please check out our tip sheets on covering scientific failures , spotting bias in clinical trials and differentiating between good and flawed research .

The Journalist’s Resource would like to thank Anne M. Cafer , an assistant professor of sociology and co-director of the University of Mississippi’s Community First Research Center for Wellbeing & Creative Achievement , for offering her guidance and insights in creating this explainer.

About The Author

Denise-Marie Ordway

Journalism : Research methods

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Research in Journalism, Media and Culture

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Faculty in Journalism, Culture and Communication analyze emerging and enduring forms of public communication and the institutional and economic conditions that sustain them. They employ a range of research methods, including ethnography, textual and historical analysis, and political economic approaches to media industries. As digital technologies have transformed mediated practices, the faculty has opened a series of new areas of inquiry, including computational journalism, the study of algorithms in institutions, and the cultural history of Silicon Valley.

Angèle Christin  is an associate professor. She is interested in fields and organizations where algorithms and ‘big data’ analytics transform professional values, expertise, and work practices. In her dissertation, she analyzed the growing importance of audience metrics in web journalism in the United States and France. Drawing on ethnographic methods, she examined how American and French journalists make sense of traffic numbers in different ways, which in turn has distinct effects on the production of news in the two countries. In a new project, she studies the construction, institutionalization, and reception of analytics and predictive algorithms in the U.S. criminal justice system.

Ted Glasser  is an emeritus professor.  His teaching and research focus on media practices and performance, with emphasis on questions of press responsibility and accountability. His books include  Normative Theories of the Media: Journalism in Democratic Societies,  written with Clifford Christians, Denis McQuail, Kaarle Nordenstreng, and Robert White, which in 2010 won the Frank Luther Mott-Kappa Tau Alpha award for best research-based book on journalism/mass communication and was one of three finalists for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s Tankard Book Award;  The Idea of Public Journalism , an edited collection of essays, recently translated into Chinese;  Custodians of Conscience: Investigative Journalism and Public Virtue , written with James S. Ettema, which won the Society of Professional Journalists’ award for best research on journalism, the Bart Richards Award for Media Criticism, and the Frank Luther Mott-Kappa Tau Alpha award for the best research-based book on journalism/mass communication;  Public Opinion and the Communication of Consent , edited with Charles T. Salmon; and  Media Freedom and Accountability , edited with Everette E. Dennis and Donald M. Gillmor.  His research, commentaries and book reviews have appeared in a variety of publications, including the  Journal of Communication, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, Journalism Studies, Policy Sciences, Journal of American History, Quill, Nieman Reports  and  The New York Times Book Review .

James T. Hamilton  is a professor and the director of the Journalism Program. His work on the economics of news focuses on the market failures involved in the production of public affairs coverage and the generation of investigative reporting. Through research in the emerging area of computational journalism, he is exploring how to lower the cost of discovering stories about the operation of political institutions.

Xiaochang Li  is an assistant professor. She is broadly interested in the history of informatics, computation, and related data practices. Drawing upon media history, history of science, and STS, her work is concerned with how information technologies shape the production and circulation of knowledge and the relationship between technical practices and social worlds. Her current research examines the history of speech recognition and natural language processing and how the pursuit of language influenced the development of AI, Machine Learning, and contemporary algorithmic culture. Her work also touches on sound studies and the history of acoustics and she has previously worked on topics concerning transnational media audiences and digital content circulation.

Fred Turner  is a professor and cultural historian of media and media technologies. Trained in both Communication and Science and Technology Studies, he has long been interested in how media and American culture have shaped one another over time. His most recent work has focused on the rise of American technocracy since World War II and on the aesthetic and ideological manifestations of that rise in the digital era. Before earning his Ph.D., Turner worked as a journalist for ten years. He continues to write for newspapers and magazines and strongly supports researchers who seek to have a public impact with their work.

Like all Communication faculty, the members of the Journalism, Communication and Culture group routinely collaborate with colleagues from around the campus. The group enjoys particularly strong collaborations with sociologists, historians, art historians, and computer scientists.

Faculty — Journalism, Media and Culture

Doctoral Students — Journalism, Media and Culture

Selected Graduates

• Sanna Ali, Ph.D. 2023. AI Policy Analyst, Stanford Cyber Policy Center and RegLab
• Jeff Nagy, Ph.D. 2023. Assistant Professor, Communication and Media Studies, York University
• Anna Gibson, Ph.D. 2022. Postdoctoral Fellow, MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing
• Jihye Lee , Ph.D. 2022. Assistant Professor, School of Advertising and Public Relations, UT Austin
• Andreas Katsanevas, Ph.D. 2020. Technology Policy Researcher, Meta
• Sheng Zou,  Ph.D. 2020. Assistant Professor, School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University
• Christine Larson , Ph.D. 2017. Assistant Professor, Journalism, University of Colorado, Boulder
• Yeon Joo , Ph.D. 2014. Associate Professor, Department of Digital Media, Myongji University, Seoul
• Morgan G. Ames , Ph.D. 2013. Assistant Adjunct Professor, School of Information, University of California, Berkeley
• Seeta Pena Gangdaharan , Ph.D. 2012. Assistant Professor, Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics
• Mike Ananny , Ph.D. 2011, Associate Professor, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California
• Daniel Kreiss , Ph.D. 2010, Associate Professor, School of Media and Journalism, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• John Kim , Ph.D. 2009, Associate Professor, Media and Cultural Studies, Macalaster College
• Erica Robles-Anderson , Ph.D. 2009, Associate Professor, Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University
• Isabel Awad , Ph.D. 2007, Associate Professor, Department of Media and Communication, Erasmus University (Netherlands)
• Cherian George , Ph.D. 2003, Professor, Associate Dean, School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University
• Francis Lapfung Lee , Ph.D. 2003, Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, City University of Hong Kong

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Journalism Research That Matters

Assistant Professor of Journalism Studies

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Despite the looming crisis in journalism, a research–practice gap plagues the news industry. This volume seeks to change the research–practice gap, with timely scholarly research on the most pressing problems facing the news industry today, translated for a non-specialist audience. Contributions from academics and journalists are brought together in order to push a conversation about how to do the kind of journalism research that matters, meaning research that changes journalism for the better for the public and helps make journalism more financially sustainable. The book covers important concerns such as the financial survival of quality news and information, how news audiences consume (or don’t consume) journalism, and how issues such as race, inequality, and diversity must be addressed by journalists and researchers alike. The book addresses needed interventions in policy research and provides a guide to understanding buzzwords like “news literacy,” “data literacy,” and “data scraping” that are more complicated than they might initially seem. Practitioners provide suggestions for working together with scholars—from focusing on product and human-centered design to understanding the different priorities that media professionals and scholars can have, even when approaching collaborative projects. This book provides valuable insights for media professionals and scholars about news business models, audience research, misinformation, diversity and inclusivity, and news philanthropy. It offers journalists a guide on what they need to know, and a call to action for what kind of research journalism scholars can do to best help the news industry reckon with disruption.

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Journalism in Practice Studies: A Systematic Review

• First Online: 22 February 2024

Cite this chapter

• Thouraya Snoussi 4 &
• Nourah Ahmed Al-Hooti   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3663-0130 5  

Part of the book series: Springer Handbooks of Political Science and International Relations ((SHPPSIR))

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This chapter deals with the literature related to journalism in practice studies (JPS) during the years from 2003 to 2023 in the hope of recognizing the usefulness of these studies for the society, especially for journalism practitioners. The findings of the systematic review highlight the growing interest in JPS research along with the increased recognition of its perspectives over the past 20 years. The analysis provided us with many studies that were based on different disciplines and dealt with a variety of fields, such as journalism ethics and professionalism, newsroom cultures and practices, and technological shifts in journalism. Furthermore, the sample studied shows that JPS has focused on qualitative studies, including textual and narrative analyses. For this, the authors believe that the JPS literature considered in this chapter provides insights for journalist practitioners into role development, changing audience behaviors, and technological advances, allowing them to adapt and stay informed. As advances in technology continue to shape the field, JPS is keeping an eye on digital transformation, especially artificial intelligence, and looks for ways to leverage it in the practice of journalism. Thus, future research will be devoted to exploring the ever-evolving landscape of journalism and its multifaceted dimensions.

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Snoussi, T., Al-Hooti, N.A. (2024). Journalism in Practice Studies: A Systematic Review. In: Barkho, L., Lugo-Ocando, J.A., Jamil, S. (eds) Handbook of Applied Journalism. Springer Handbooks of Political Science and International Relations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48739-2_9

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Exploring the value of academic research in journalism

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Much has been written of late about the relatively low quality of academic research in the journalism and mass communication field. Since this is a critical time, the dawn of a new age of communication, there’s much to learn. The research gap is a major source of disagreement between professionals and scholars. Professionals argue that much research is unreadable and, frankly, useless. If you take the time, scholars counter, you’ll find important insights.

Why do we care about research? It’s important to the future of journalism education because publication in the so-called peer-reviewed journals traditionally has been the number one criteria for faculty promotion and tenure. Yes, research beats teaching .

In the professional world, journalism that makes a difference is measured by actual impact — by the jailed people who are freed, by the criminals who are jailed, by new laws or policies that save lives or stop government waste. This “community service” (as it is called) is not given the importance it deserves at universities. Publishing in academic journals is what counts, even if it does nothing to further how journalism serves America. (See Geneva Overholser’s blog about “what’s missing” in the debate about journalism schools.)

Let’s look at the details: Three main journals boast the word “journalism” in their titles. Citation research, the tracking of how often scholars quote each other, paints a grim picture of these three. None of the three is considered among the most cited or prestigious of the journals in the communications field, nor in the social studies field at large.

For this comparison we used the helpful databases built by Thomson Reuters , which tracks thousands of journals and citations. The three journals in question all are published by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication : Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly , Journalism & Mass Communication Educator and Journalism & Communication Monographs.

Of the three, only Quarterly has been selected for inclusion in the “Web of Science” database, and to receive a Journal Impact Factor in Journal Citation Reports . Educator was rejected in January 2010 but is up for re-evaluation in January 2013. Monographs is currently under evaluation. Having only one of the three “journalism-titled” journals in the database is not a good start.

To qualify for the database, Thomson Reuters considers: 1. The journals’ publishing standards 2. Editorial content 3. International diversity and 4. Correct metadata. A journal that has never been cited, for example, would not be picked up by Thomson Reuters.

We checked the Quarterly against all the communication journals in the dataset. Given how much it produces, how much was it cited in 2011? The Journal Impact Factor ranked Quarterly 48 of the 72 communication journals. Considering the importance journalists place on their profession — “bedrock of democracy” – being in the bottom 50 percent would not sit well. Of the 2,943 social science journals, Quarterly ranks 1,950, according to impact measure. (The Journal Impact Factor, Thomson Reuters says , can be “used to provide a gross approximation of the prestige of journals to which individuals have been published.”)

Is there a conspiracy against communication journals? Do social scientists simply not like journalism or communication? Hardly. Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking  (number 1 out of 72 communication journals when ranked by Journal Impact Factor) ranks in the top 10 percent of all social science journals, again using citations in 2011. Note the words cyber and social networking in the title. We desperately need to know the social science of engagement and impact in the digital age.

Another benchmark that can be used to rate journals is Google Scholar . It lists the number of times articles or publications have been cited. In our Sept 4. search, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly produces 7,730 results, Journalism & Mass Communication Educator produces 1,140 results and Journalism & Communication Monographs produces 284 results.

These are bad numbers when you consider that there are 7,149 full-time and 5,162 part-time professors, who should be reading and quoting each other. But they get worse when you realize that only some of the articles are cited at all. The chart below is from SCImago Journal & Country Rank , which also tracks citations. Every year, at least half of the Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly articles are totally uncited. The latest year on record shows no citations for a whopping 69 percent of the articles. Remember, the Quarterly looks to us like the best of the three “journalism journals.”

Is it really wise to base tenure and promotion upon journal articles that are never cited? It’s difficult to imagine working journalists promoted for writing stories no one ever mentioned.

Perhaps the good research is really good. At the 2012 convention, the Association of Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication gave out a thumb drive with the “best” scholarly articles from decades of the journals. We reviewed them. Alas, for the most part, they seemed derivative, obvious or obtuse. To quote a senior journalism educator: “There are three categories of research these days: 1. Who cares? 2. No shit! 3. I don’t have any idea what you are talking about.” To be generous, perhaps we should add a category: “4. Needs more work, but there might be something there. (Or, Close But No Cigar.)”

Some of the “ Research You Can Use ,” listed on the AEJMC web site seemed to fit into Category 4: The social responsibility of news organizations, gatekeeping, agenda-setting and “framing” all seemed close. But in the lens of today’s explosion of social and mobile media and its attendant participatory culture, only such classics as Marshal McLuhan’s “Media is the Message” and Walter Lippmann’s “Public Opinion” seem to hold water. Yes, media gives us a picture of the world. Media types effect messages. But it’s all different now in the digital age.

Valiant educators over the years, such as Del Brinkman (formerly of Knight Foundation) and currently Michael Schudson of Columbia University, have tried to find and translate important scholarly work, and in the journalism field its tough slogging. One reason: The most quoted journalism notion in the past decade, the one media mogul Rupert Murdoch famously repeated to what was then named the American Society of Newspaper Editors, did not come from a journalism journal of any type but from Marc Prensky, who showed “digital natives” really think differently than the rest of us. Hopefully, Emily Bell of the Tow Center at Columbia will stay on those lines as she develops applied research capacity. And the great teams at Missouri, the University of North Carolina and elsewhere keep producing important work (even if it isn’t published in the journals we are writing about today).

How do the editors of the journalism journals react to being ignored, in relative terms, by other scholars? They say they aren’t marketing themselves well enough. They say they don’t get enough funding for research. They say some articles aren’t meant to be quoted (they actually created a category of these, which cuts down on the embarrassment of having more than half of the articles in a given year not cited at all.) If you mention this blog to a prominent scholar you will be regaled with the shortcomings of citation studies, just as scholars who can’t write clearly will go on ad nauseam about the short-comings of the Flesch readability test.

We wrote Dr. Daniel Riffe at the University of North Carolina, editor of the most-cited journalism journal, the Quarterly . Here’s what we asked:

1.      What do you think of citation studies – specifically the Thomson Reuters impact scale — that rank the Quarterly 48 of 72 in the communications field?

2.      The SCImago Journal and Country Rank, from the Scopus database, says nearly 70 percent of the articles in the Quarterly are not cited at all. If that is accurate, why is that?    

3.      Are journal citations in general a good measure of the quality of a journal? Why or why not?

4.      What would you say to those who argue that the quality of the Quarterly and the AEJMC journals should be significantly improved? If that needs to happen, how could that be done?

5.      Is there any piece of research – cited or uncited – that you think proves the value of the Quarterly in its mission of keeping up with the latest developments? Are there, for example, any of the AEJMC-cited “Research You Can Use” items that are especially illustrative?

Dr. Riffe, Richard Cole Eminent Professor at UNC/Chapel Hill, said he would answer as soon as time allows but noted his journal work is “on hold” due to the start of a new semester.

Meanwhile, let’s ponder the advice from America’s great early journalist, the writer and statesman Benjamin Franklin: “If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead & rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.” Since so many journalism and communications professionals endeavor to do the later, the least scholars can do is to try harder to do the former. Being promoted and getting a lifetime job guarantee for writing things no one cites is just un-American.

By Knight Foundation’s Eric Newton , senior adviser to the President, and Amber Robertson,  special projects contractor

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