ABSTRACT
Research examining the relationships among agenda setting's primary variables presents a rather confusing picture. The inconsistency of the results may be due in part to the agenda-setting effects of specific issue types; however, Iyengar and Kinder (1987; cited in Rogers & Dearing, 1988) offered much more serious and biting reasons for the inconsistency of results:
Although research on agenda-setting has proliferated over the past decade, so far, the results add up to rather little. With a few important exceptions, agenda-setting research has been theoretically naive, methodologically primitive, both confused and confusing…Agenda-setting may be an apt metaphor, but it is no theory. (p. 557)
Iyengar and Kinder's conclusion about agenda-setting methodologies may have merit, but this analysis takes issue with the spirit of the statement. Agenda-setting research presents many methodological problems concerning the measurement of agendas and agenda relationships over time; however, the body of research indicates that the methodological approaches have grown with the emerging time series databases and methodological techniques and have built on the efforts and visions of the field's fledgling analyses.