Discusses the relational teaching approach (RTA), comprising behaviors indicative of competence, immediacy, and humor. Examines the association between the RTA and teacher satisfaction. Finds that it is within teachers' control to enhance satisfaction with their job by developing a repertoire of interpersonal skills. (RS)

Examines whether violations that are incongruent with student expectations are significantly different than congruent violations of expectancy in relation to student ratings of instruction. Shows that college students having high expectations/high experiences evaluated teachers more favorably than students with low expectations/high experiences,…

Examines the impact of communication apprehension (CA) on perceptions of leadership and intragroup attraction in small task-oriented groups, using 68 undergraduates working on a class project. Finds high CA students were rated by themselves (and by others) to be lower in emerged leadership and social and task attraction than those with lower CA.…

Explores the relationship between linguistic and conceptual structuring of narratives, focusing on linguistic devices used by German and U.S. narrators to identify transitions in text structure. Identifies and outlines two types of narrative orientation: differentiating events and integrating events. (SR)

Investigates significant predictors of article publication for female and male mass communication faculty, and examines predictors of book publication by gender. Finds that traditional reasons for explaining females' alleged lower level of productivity fail to gain support for mass communication faculty in the late 1980s. (SR)

Conceptualizes self-reports of communication as a type of account, and conducts interviews based on H. A. Simon's protocol analysis technique with participants in an organizational simulation. Finds that participants used a wide variety of resources to account for their communication with others. Discusses implications for the use of self-report…

Examines whether behavioral intentions (BI) mediate between attitudes (A) and behaviors (B). Finds A-BI correlation higher than A-B correlation, BI-B correlation higher than A-B correlation, A-BI correlation higher than BI-B correlation, variation in BI-B correlations greater than A-BI, and attitudinal relevance affected the magnitude of A-BI…

Develops a method for measuring individual scholarly productivity of active researchers in the field of mass communications between the years 1924 and 1990. Provides data concerning active researchers and the number of articles published. (HB)

Discusses the role of a "basic course director" who oversees the consistency among multiple sections of the same course. Surveys communications departments at representative midwestern universities concerning the methods and functions of such a director of introductory courses. (HB)

Discusses some of the issues surrounding the ways family members use communication to create and maintain their relationships. Looks at the claims and work of other scholars to formulate a tentative pathway for the author's research. (RS)

Discusses interest in studies of media and the family; the creation of social meaning for media consumption; and in children's interpretation of television. Notes that the emergence of qualitative investigations represent a challenge to the assumption that the paradigm of media consumption is an individual viewer positioned before a screen in a…

Considers possible dysfunctions of supportive communication in the workplace and proposes a research agenda to investigate these dysfunctions at the micro and macro levels of analysis. (RS)

Analyzes the discourse contexts of children's justifications in verbal disputes during pretend play and object construction activities. Finds that justifications underwent little development in disputes about the physical world or the truth of assertions, but that significant developments in their use, content, and discourse context occurred in…

Examines how relations of power are privileged or marginalized by ethnographers. Discusses how ethnography is judged by and subsumed within the ideological practices of academia. (SR)

Discusses the typical form and content of 40 theoretical scientific papers chosen from the most-cited papers in the "Science Citation Index." Demonstrates that the form of these papers is similar to that of experimental and methods papers but that the content differs substantially. (HB)