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Article published In:
Fifty years of agenda-setting research: Volume II
Edited by Chris J. Vargo
[The Agenda Setting Journal 3:1] 2019
► pp. 43–62

Measuring public opinion formation

Assessing first- and second-level agenda setting through salience measures

| Georgia Southern University
| The University of Texas at Austin

For the past 50 years since the seminal agenda-setting study, scholars have continued to make strides in understanding the importance mass communication plays in public opinion formation. Although scholars have measured both first- and second-level agenda setting often using open-ended response, more close-ended measures might assist in measuring the theory, adding to the rich data. This experimental study directly compared open-ended responses shown to gauge an agenda-setting effect with close-ended responses to enhance the assessment of both first- and second-level agenda setting. The findings identified close-ended scales, including news salience, social salience, personal salience, and feelings salience, that add to the precision of measuring the salience of issues and attributes, indicating we have alternative measures to gauge agenda setting.

Keywords: agenda setting, salience measures, experimental study, quantitative, open-ended versus close-ended measures
Article outline
  • Literature review
    • Designs and measures
    • Comparative methodological research
  • Hypotheses and research questions
  • Method
    • Stimulus material
    • Open-ended responses
    • Close-ended responses
  • Results
    • Second-level agenda setting
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 2 January 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/asj.18012.kow
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