Unnamed Sources and the News: A Follow-Up Study

column inches and the basis of attention score. The averaged data of the four Australian publications showed a correlation coefficient of r = .98. Accordingly, the attention score devised for this investigation showed r e sults highly consistent with those obtained from the measurement of column inches or the counting of items, not only in subject-matter categories, but in direction categories as well. The writer feels that perhaps the attention score, because of the greater number of variables covered by the measure, was more discriminating than the sole measure of column inches or item count. However, while the attention score might seem to offer an alternate technique of content analysis for daily newspapers, it is felt that it might better serve as one that is used in conjunction with one of the more conventional methods of content analysis. While a single method of analysis, and presumably the attention score would serve as well as others, can be used for rough measures of content distribution, the experience of the New Zealand-Australian study indicates that the use of more than one index is probably advisable. It might be pointed out, at least in the New Zealand-Australian study, that the attention score device proved most valuable when used in conjunction with item count. By dividing the total attention score in each subject-matter category or directional category by the number of items in the same category, an average score-per-item can be obtained which can be placed on a scale ranging from 0 to 5 points. In this manner, if any subject-matter category or my directional category receives consistently strong play, its averaged attention score per item in that category would reveal that fact. Allowance must be made, of course, for those categories which contain only one or two items, each with a relatively high attention score.