An Introduction to The National Language Research Institute: A Sketch of its Achievements
Third Edition(1988)/ HTML Version(1997)

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II.4.2 High-School Pupils and Newspapers

(1956. 252 pages)
We made this survey in order to find how much high school pupils read papers, and how well they understand them, and also to ascertain the real conditions of the mass communications with which they come in contact. We examined about 5,000 pupils of full-time senior high schools in Tokyo, at Akita City and at Kakunodate-mati, Akita Prefecture, in the following points: 1) What part of the newspaper do high school pupils read first? 2) How many hours do they read papers a day ? 3) How well do they read each article? 4) Why do they read papers? 5) Do they find papers difficult? 6) Do they trust papers? 7) What are the factors that influence the degree to which they come in contact with papers? 8) How well are the paper's contents understood? 9) How do the district and home influence them in understanding papers? 10) Are school bulletins read? 11) What do they understand about international affairs through papers. 12) How does the manner of news presentation influence their understanding? 13) What books do they read? 14) How do they come in contact with radio and movies? This survey was made on a relatively large scale. Sixteen schools, including one national, five public, and ten private schools, were chosen at random from among the full-time high schools in Tokyo. Therefore, the sixteen schools may be regarded as representative. The two prefectural schools in Akita City belonged to the upper stratum of high schools. This inclination was redressed by a survey of all the pupils at a high school in Kakunodate-mati. Consequently, the results of this survey can be presumed to be characteristic of pupils of full-time senior high schools all over Japan. This report mainly faithfully describes the data obtained by the survey. Concerning the above-mentioned points, many tables are appended, analyzing the data by region, grade, and sex. This is the first report of a general survey under the title of "Youth and Newspapers. Their Approach and Comprehension," made from 1954 to 1955 by a committee comprized of five persons from the Institute, six from the Japanese Newspaper Association, and four from universities. The report was written mainly by HAYASI Siro~ of the Institute and KAMEI Kazutuna of the Association; it was published under the joint auspices of the Institute and the Association.

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