A study of the relationship between the principal-adviser-staff interaction process and the thematic content and intensity of coverage of the high school press

Problem. The problem was to determine whether or not a significant relationship exists between the interaction among the role participants of the high school student press--the principal, the adviser, and the newspaper staff--and the type of newspaper produced, as described by the nature of the thematic content and the intensity of purpose evidenced in its coverage. Procedure. A Principal-Adviser-Staff Interaction Questionnaire designed by the author was used to determine the behavioral responses of various combinations of interactors (Principal-Adviser, Adviser-Staff, and Principal-Staff) along three broad interaction dimensions: Control (non-restrictive to restrictive); Role relationships (extent of mutual trust, understanding, and consideration), and opportunities for Creativity (Open to Closed). The instrument was composed of 15 questions for each dimension--five to measure each participant's perception of Principal-Adviser interaction, five to measure Adviser-Staff interaction, and five to measure Principal-Staff interaction. Content analyses were made of five sample newspapers from each of the 47 schools in the sample population to obtain a ratio of critical coverage to total reading material. Critical coverage included topics not traditionally considered routine or universal topics for high school newspapers, such as (1) political issues (local, state, and national); (2) school policies and regulations (local, district, state); (3) social issues (drug abuse, sex education, student freedom, peace and protest movements, racial issues, poverty, prejudice, the draft, pollution and ecology, world peace, war, etc.); (4) reader response articles (letters to the editor—on topics of significance, results of opinion polls, opinion features); and (5) past and future community happenings (local community and the broader community). A panel of qualified judges made a detailed study of the intensity of the coverage in the newspapers and ranked them in order of highest to lowest intensity in seven areas: leadership, in-depth coverage, support, public relations, information service, effective writing (or academic), and entertainment. The principal, adviser, and newspaper staff mean scores from each sub-test of the questionnaire were correlated with the ranked data for critical coverage and intensity of newspaper coverage in the seven areas to determine the degree of relationship that exists. Null hypotheses of no relationships were assumed and tested statistically. [...]Education, College o