Overview of Student Resources
Chapter Resources
Student resources specific to each chapter include the following:
- Guiding questions: These are the fundamental questions that the chapter aims to answer. Understanding the answers to these questions are the basic learning objectives that readers should accomplish.
- Chapter outlines: These give students a brief overview of the entire chapter and its various subsections in outline form.
- Media resources:Each chapter guide provides a list of various links to media resources that feature, for example: lectures or informal talks by family communication scholars, or media clips, articles, or song lyrics that relate to family communication topics. This resource list promotes further study and examination of media treatment of issues related to family scholarship.
Appendix on Research Methods
As an additional resource, we provide an appendix on research methods. Family Communication is designed as a text for an advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate student audience. Consequently, readers are assumed to have at least an elementary background in social scientific research and theories. In many academic programs in the social and behavioral sciences (e.g., communication, psychology, family studies, and sociology) an introductory research methods course is a prerequisite to more advanced courses in the discipline. Readers who have not had such a course would probably benefit from reading the appendix of Family Communication, which explains how research is conducted, along with other important issues that consumers of research need to understand. With that basic knowledge in hand, readers should have no difficulty following and comprehending the remaining chapters in the book.
Research Methods Appendix