Three studies (N = 1,346) detail the development of three theoretically grounded instruments operationalizing "instructor strictness." Using open-ended questionnaire data (n = 427), study 1 inductively derives an understanding of the instructor behaviors that students perceive as strict. These patterns of behavior are then condensed into…

Communication teachers spend considerable time instructing students how to organize and deliver professional oral presentations, design effective PowerPoint slides, answer interview questions, and communicate effectively in problem-solving teams. Yet considerably less time is spent systematically teaching them the communication skill they will use…

This study examined the context within which subjects (students) selected one of the following failure management strategies: silence, concession, excuse, justification, and refusal. Contextual variables included: relationship with the reproacher, the students' communicative goal orientation, moral severity of the failure, character of the…

Four studies were conducted to investigate the relationship between communication and predictive accuracy. Subjects, students enrolled in various college speech and communication classes, completed the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values, first in terms of their own values and then in terms of how they believed a specified target would respond.…

This study explored the ways in which college students conveyed elder respect. Based on data from a questionnaire survey of 521 subjects, 12 forms of elder respect, ranging from care respect to celebratory respect, were measured. Of these forms, six--acquiescent respect, care respect, linguistic respect, salutatory respect, consulting respect, and…

Instructional systems, both distance education and campus-based, may be viewed in terms of intrapersonal and interpersonal "instructional dialogues," that mediate and facilitate learning respectively, and "instructional resources" that enable such dialogues. Resources include self-instruction texts, tutorials, instructor…

To compare differences between types of friendships on an assortment of communication and situational variables, a study was conducted that involved pairs of four types of intimate friends: male-male, female-female, male-female with romantic interest, and male-female without romantic interest. Subjects, 61 pairs of college students, completed…

Presents two studies of the influence of group size, prior acquaintance, and gender composition on talking and silence in decision making groups (N=157). Results suggested that friends talked more than strangers, and leaders talked more than nonleaders. Group differences were reflected more dramatically in patterns of silence. (JAC)

Stimatizing attitudes and expectations toward mentally ill individuals often lead to their behavioral confirmation. To investigate attitudes and behaviors towards people described as seeking psychological counseling, 136 college students (68 males, 68 females) took part in a mixed-sex dyadic conversation. One dyad member was randomly chosen as the…

Avoidance strategies involve the tactics and techniques people use when they don't wish to be influenced by others. To investigate the types of avoidance strategies men and women use to deal with an unwelcome persuasion attempt from an intimate partner, undergraduates wrote essays describing how they avoided such attempts. A 24-strategy coding…

The argument has been advanced that in intimate self-disclosure sex differences occur with males being less intimately disclosive than females--especially to other males. The argument posits that males who have homophobia (a fear of sexual contact with members of the same sex) might view intimate self-disclosure as a homosexual act and thus avoid…

Results of this investigation suggest that the greater an individual's cognitive sophistication about conversation, the better his or her performance in, and memory for, social interaction. (Auth/PD)

Forty-one college students participated in a study designed to gather validity and reliability information on a procedure used to measure communication competence, the Communication Competency Assessment Instrument (CCAI). The study, in confirming operationalization validity, found that self-report measures correlated only slightly with…

Investigated the impact of sexual composition and competitive/cooperative orientation on interaction patterns in same-sex and mixed-sex dyads. Found that the competitive or cooperative orientation of the interactants exerts a far greater impact on the communication behavior of dyads than does their sexual composition. (PD)

To explore the impact of the environment on perceptions of compliance gaining situations, 97 university students were asked to recall and describe situations in which they had had to persuade someone to do something. Their descriptions of compliance gaining situations were then evaluated for similarity by three additional groups of students. The…