A study investigated the perceptions workers had of labor unions. Affiliation behavior and gender differences were employed as independent variables with respect to workers' attributions of trustworthiness in labor unions and their messages, as measured by the three dimensions of character, expertise, and dynamism of the Giffin Trust Differential…

Offers five recommendations for teachers or facilitators of team communication: (1) students should avoid groupthink; (2) offer students methods for reaching agreement in a timely manner; (3) vary subjects of group writing assignments; (4) encourage all students to be active participants; and (5) emphasize the importance of good writing skills to…

A study examined the effects of gender on social interaction under numerically imbalanced conditions. Specifically, the study tested R. M. Kanter's assumption that all tokens (individuals who enter a work environment where their gender is numerically scarce) respond in a similar manner to token conditions, although evidence exists that males and…

Reports results from a study of university students in Sweden that investigated aspects of communicative processes using face-to-face and computer-mediated communication. Examined influences of gender on communication equality, social relations, and communicative processes and studied differences in self-awareness. Results showed few significant…

The influence of sex and androgyny on the emergence of small group leadership was studied. The subjects, 38 male and 28 female college students, were pretested on several personality measures, including Sargent and Miller's Leadership Questionnaire and Bem's Sex Role Inventory. Leadership in task and social situations was measured after four group…

Biological sex, social area, task area, and psychological sex were used as independent variables when 72 high school students in speech communication classes rated themselves and other members of small discussion groups. The results for males, females, and composite groups revealed that psychological sex was a more significant discriminating…

This book describes how talk is used to build social organization within face-to-face interaction among a group of urban black children, an analysis providing the opportunity to study language, culture, and social organization from an integrated perspective. Children from a southwest Philadelphia neighborhood were tape-recorded during peer-group…

Examined the skill and gender of individual group discussants and the sex composition of the group as factors potentially influencing perceptions of emergent leadership. Confirmed that task competence, more than gender, was crucially related to an individual's emergence as the group's leader. (PD)

Results confirm the hypotheses that performance/self-esteem has a substantial impact on an individual's chances of being perceived as a group's emergent leader, his or her ratings by other group members and trained observers on key leadership variables, and his or her self-assessment as a group participant. (PD)

A study was conducted to determine how males and females were perceived when using identical dominant behaviors. The subjects, 360 college students, viewed one of six stimulus drawings of groups of four seated people and indicated their attributions of dominant behavior on 22 bipolar perceptual scales. Analyses were conducted to create and compare…

Reports on a study of seventh-grade students' interactions in small groups during a biology laboratory activity. Finds that girls have the potential to perform equally as well as do boys in the science laboratory and that both individual and gender differences contribute to students' differential verbal communication and laboratory engagement.…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 12 titles deal with the following topics: (1) communication style in initial meetings of small groups; (2) gender orientation, communicative competency, and communication satisfaction in acquaintance dyads; (3) attitudinal,…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 27 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) teacher perception of male and female principals' communication styles; (2) a study of informative oral communication skills in early and late adolescence; (3)…

Examining how students respond to gender-related issues, a study observed six classroom discussions of Fundamentals of Interpersonal Communication, an introductory level college course which integrated gender issues. Four different classes, each consisting of 25-30 male and female students averaging 18-20 years of age, participated in the study.…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 15 titles deal with the following topics: the rhetorical dimensions of nondiscursive, fragmentary communication; perceptions of persuasion situations and the question of transituational consistency of behavior; alcohol use and…