Journalism Degree Motivations

Scientific knowledge should reflect valid, consistent measurement. It is argued research on scale development needs to be more systematic and prevalent. The intent of this article is to address scale development by creating and validating a construct that measures the underlying reasons why undergraduate students seek a degree in journalism, the Journalism Degree Motivations (JDM) scale. Through a multimethod approach and seven-step process, a set of motivations that reflect existing theory and measures was developed. The JDM scale is composed of eight factors: social responsibility, reporting, social prestige, sports media, photography, writing, varied career, and numbers and science anxiety.