Abstract:

Within 'social research', as within 'market research', the functions of communication research are: I. to optimise the efficiency of specific communications; II. to assess the effects of communication acts. Its contributions are both direct and indirect. Directly, it helps to improve the efficiency of social propaganda. Indirectly, it leads to a fuller under- standing of the communication processes involved. The former is the most obvious beneficial consequence, but the latter is perhaps the more important in the longer term. Some of the many possible direct applications of communication research are exampled by studies undertaken by the Health Education Council in England and Wales in connection with the development and monitoring of its anti-smoking campaigns.