Document Design - Volume 1, Issue 2, 1999

What is it that helps printed newspapers successfully compete with other media for the audience — their marketing efforts, the content they offer, or their design? This paper summarizes the results of an extensive research program, the evaluation of 350 typical local dailies in Germany. They were analyzed thoroughly in 1989 and again in 1994. In addition, a survey provided extensive information about their marketing measures during that period. Finally, socio-demo-graphic and other conditions that newspapers are confronted with in their trade areas were included in the analysis. Criteria for success were the circulation and the reach of every newspaper. Newspaper design, in general, proved to be a little more important than content and marketing for attracting new readers and for keeping old ones. Different strategies, though, seem to apply depending on whether a newspaper wants to reach young or less educated readers or has to compete with other local papers. In general, however, an 'airy,' well-structured design, a greater variety of topics every day, more local orientation and the strict separation of news and entertainment were the best recipes for newspaper success.

This paper reports new information concerning the variability of the persuasive effects of variables across messages. Evidence from meta-analytic reviews of persuasive effects research indicates that such variability is common and substantial, even under well-specified experimental conditions. The implications of this evidence for the design, analysis, and interpretation of research on persuasive message effects are discussed.

Kazuo Terakado is a leading scientific journalist in Japan. He has made a significant contribution to the popularization of science through his leadership in the epoch-making Newton Magazine. He is the author of numerous scientific books including Deep Space and Solar System Guidebook. On behalf of Document Design, Lawrie Hunter recently posed some document-related questions to Mr. Terakado.

Revising texts to improve learning has produced successful revisions but the reasons why they were successful has not been made clear. In this review, we describe the text revision strategy derived from the text processing model of Kintsch by Britton and Gülgöz (1991). Three principles were developed and implemented on natural texts to make them more memorable. The texts used in different experiments varied in content and language and the studies employed different measures of learning and reading time. The emerging pattern from the reviewed studies is that revised texts that add the missing connections to the text, lead to better learning, especially when readers lack inference-making skills, domain-specific knowledge or motivation for cognitive effort.

Research instruments for studying information selection in manuals should meet several goals at the same time. First of all, they should accurately register relevant data, such as selected information, selection moments, and reading times. They should also enable the reader to use both the manual and the accompanying product in a natural way. And finally, both data collection and analysis should not be too time-consuming or expensive. In this paper, four research instruments that may be used for studying selection processes in manuals are described and evaluated with respect to these three requirements. Three of them are well-known from other research domains: recording sentence reading times by button presses, methods of eye movement registration and the thinking aloud technique. The fourth, called the click & read method, was recently developed for studying the use of procedural and declarative information in software manuals. This instrument presents the manual in a paper layout on a large screen. The text is presented in blocks of comparable length and is initially blurred. Non-blurred headings above the blocks enable readers to select a block and sharpen it by clicking on it. These clicks are recorded and thus provide selection and time data.The evaluation shows that none of the four instruments is suitable for all research questions about manual use: instruments should be carefully chosen for specific research questions. Then again, all techniques have their advantages and disadvantages, some of which we are not yet certain about. Therefore, the paper concludes by arguing that a thorough analysis, comparison and further development of available and new research instruments is necessary to further facilitate and improve studies of information selection and processing