title: News media tracking of tobacco control: a review of sampling methodologies.
abstract: News media tracking can be used to understand the content of news coverage and quantify its influence on public opinion and the social environment. We hypothesize that a parsimonious sampling of public health news coverage can gather statistically equivalent information to capture a census of coverage. We tested two general approaches to sampling. First, we randomly selected articles within a timeframe. Second, we randomly selected dates during 2000. None of these strategies showed a substantial deviation from the 2000 census of articles. We conclude that sampling coverage can produce estimates statistically equivalent to a census. Researchers should utilize coverage sampling.
authors.affiliation: RTI International, Washington, DC 20036, USA. devans@rti.org
authors.forename: W Douglas
authors.initials: WD
authors.lastname: Evans
authors.forename: Alec
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ulasevich
mesh_terms: D015706:Bibliometrics; D019992:Databases as Topic; D006801:Humans; D008402:Mass Media / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D009524:Newspapers as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011634:Public Health; D011639:Public Opinion; D000074606:Smoking Prevention; D040241:Social Marketing; D019460:Tobacco Industry