| This study examines public attitudes toward press access to government records, providing a new scale for measuring support for press access, identifying factors related to support, and deriving a model predicting support.;Seven data sets are analyzed, including surveys of three college student samples, secondary analysis of three general-public phone surveys, and a probability-based national phone survey of 403 United States adults in spring 2006.;Regression analysis and structural equation modeling test whether support for press access is best explained by societal power, newspaper importance, or attitudes toward community engagement.;The findings indicate that support for press access is a political attitude such that the strongest predictors of support are attitudes toward community engagement and support for press rights, regardless of age, income, education, views toward newspaper reading, or other variables. A political model is tested through confirmatory factor analysis structural regression modeling and path modeling, providing a good fit for the final telephone survey data. Upon replication, the model also fit another national survey data set.;In attempting to explain how people think about access, a good-fitting confirmatory factor analysis measurement model of the 12-item support for press access scale indicates that support for press access comprises four first-order factors (support for government operations records, privacy-oriented records, crime records, and public safety records), and a second-order factor (overall support for press access). The support for press access scale is reliable across studies and demonstrates convergent and divergent validity, applicable for use in paper and telephone surveys among different populations.;The study's implications are discussed, including explanation for why support for press access ebbs and flows during different times of societal community engagement. Also, the findings provide insights for helping journalists, scholars, politicians, and citizens build a stronger democracy based not on fear or secrecy, but on self-governance and knowledge. |
