Observations on Estimation of Communication Effects on Political Knowledge and a Test of Intracommunication Mediation.

The article comments on four articles in the October 2005 issue of the journal "Political Communication" that signify the importance of the study of political learning from communication sources to the broader domain of political communication scholarship. It looks at consistencies and inconsistencies in these four approaches to the study of political communication. It notes that three of the four articles take the uncommon approach of using panel data, which allow more sophisticated analyses that account for prior levels of the independent variables, the dependent variable, or both. It also cites differences in the study contexts and methodologies used in the articles that could play an important role in the variability of conclusions.