Scientific Approach

A scientific approach to communication involves direct, or empirical, and indirect observation of phenomena, testing for relationships among those phenomena and constructing theories using inductive-statistical, deductive-nomological, and deductive-statistical models, as defined later in this entry.

Concerns about propaganda after World War I and vigorous interest in broadcast media were probably the primary impetus for the rise of scientific research on communication in the 20th century. Early communication scientists were interested in accurate, objective analyses of propaganda messages and the effects of new media such as radio and film. Thus, many communication scholars found potential in applying social science methods to the study of communication during this time. Media studies and social psychology took the lead in developing scientific approaches to communication in the first half of the century.

A series of motivational films for soldiers titled Why We Fight, produced in World War II, offers an example of the kind of messages of interest to scholars interested in understanding communication scientifically. The Army contracted with Yale University to evaluate the effectiveness of these films. From this project emerged a new approach to studying communication, emulating other disciplines that used a scientific approach. A book titled Communication and Persuasion, authored by Carl Hovland, Irving Janis, and Harold Kelly, reported the results of these now landmark studies. The studies used careful observation grounded in repli-cable measurement and experiments that use pre-and posttest measurements and control groups.

Since early propaganda, media, and persuasion studies, scientific approaches have become increasingly common and more sophisticated in generating communication theory. This entry is divided into two parts—observation, which is the foundation of science, and theory building, or what theoretical models are used to interpret the data that is discovered with a scientific approach.