Erica Scharrer (PhD, Syracuse University) is Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is co-author of three additional books, including Media and the American Child, and editor of the Media Effects/Media Psychology volume of the International Encyclopedia of Media Studies. Her research on the topics of media content, opinions of media, media effects, and media literacy has appeared in a number of journals.

Srividya Ramasubramanian (PhD, Penn State University) is Presidential Impact Fellow, Professor of Communication, Affiliated Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, and Director of the Difficult Dialogues Project at Texas A&M University. Her research focuses on critical media effects, diversity, anti-racism, prejudice reduction, media literacy, and social justice and has been published in several journals, books, and popular press outlets. She is also Executive Director of Media Rise, a nonprofit for meaningful media for social justice.

1. Foundations and Definitions 2. Ethical Considerations 3. Operationalization and Otherness 4. Sampling and Representation 5. Soliciting Opinions Through Survey Research 6. Studying Responses through Experimental Methods 7. Examining Communication Content in Content Analysis Research 8. Calculations and Complexity 9. Statistical Analysis: From Principles to Practice 10. Mixing Methods: Triangulating with Qualitative Research 11. Community Partnerships and Partitipatory Research 12. Communicating Research for Publication, Policy, and the Public