The possibility that judges' expectancy effects may adversely affect the results of jury trials is a problem that needs careful theoretical analysis and innovative methods of resolution. Traditional efforts by the legal community to counteract the threat of verbal/nonverbal bias by judges include the "Code of Judicial Conduct," curative…

The Communication Role Assessment Measure (CRAM) is an application of role theory to organizational communication. Using a communication-based taxonomy, CRAM was developed to integrate previous research in the field and to assess the following elements: the amount of time spent by members of an organization in selected communication roles; their…

A study was conducted on the relationships between information seeking and individual cognitive structures (both individual cognitive complexity and the constructs used to understand others). Specifically, the study sought to determine how people use questions to reduce the uncertainty of meeting new people in impression-formation interviews. The…

A study was designed to compare the verbal responses of trained and untrained helpers confronted with the same crisis situation. The subjects were 24 trained graduate helpers, 24 untrained graduate helpers, and 24 untrained undergraduate helpers. Each subject was paired with an actor in one of the following conditions: male actor with male…

Based on preliminary interviews with 40 adults, an instrument was devised for assessing voters' uses and gratifications of viewing television news about presidential campaigns. When this instrument was used to survey 226 persons of voting age, an analysis by orthogonal rotation of the data produced a six-factor solution accounting for 52.6% of the…

Tests were constructed to measure three dimensions of prejudice related to interracial communication: stereotyping, affective reactions, and communicative social distance. A test was also constructed to measure the type of attributional choices made about blacks. The attributional choices were either defensive (negative and stereotypical) or…

Organizational communication research needs a conceptual model or taxonomy of variables for developing a knowledge base for past and future findings and information access and retrieval. The proposed Outcome-Determinant-Interface (ODI) model distinguishes three major groups of variables, each divided into classes and subclasses. The outcome…

The interest in the research conducted on the level of understanding that jurors have of the instructions used in Florida criminal trials, the impact of time delay on juror comprehension, the value of reading a copy of the instructions as they were presented orally by the judge, and the relationship between comprehension of the law and attitude…

A study was conducted to examine the extent to which verbal statements of context influenced the perception of emotion in facial expressions. In addition, it examined the pairing of both congruent and incongruent stimulus sources. The subjects, 98 college students, were shown photographs of four male and four female actors displaying facial…

Drawing on personal observations and on a study of patient reactions, this paper considers the problem of doctor/patient communication failure in the inner city clinic. It first discusses the role of dialect variation in communication failure, causes of communication failure in the medical interview, factors contributing to doctor/patient…

Since the relationships among theory, research, and pedagogy often are not clearly explicated in the literature on communication in the helping professions, this paper seeks to remedy the situation by exploring these relationships. Part I presents the general perspectives and orientations that are used to study and explain communicating in helping…

To identify the communication concerns of preservice (prospective and student teachers) and inservice teachers and to determine the differences in those concerns with regard to a three-phase conceptualization--concern with self, with task, and with impact--a study was conducted involving a total of 227 prospective, student, and inservice…

The "climate of opinion" is the dominant direction of opinions and perceptions as expressed by existing or assumed activities of constituent individuals, groups, and institutions. There are three regional definitions of this concept: macrolevel, local level, and individual level. A model of climate of opinion contains the following features: (1)…

In response to an earlier symposium report, this journal presents six position papers dealing with the question, "What criteria should be used to judge the admissibility of evidence to support theoretical propositions regarding communication research?" The analyses and arguments include "The Research Process" by Wayne Brockriede, "The Reflexivity…

The written proceedings of the 1975 Southwest American Business Communication Association (ABCA) Spring Conference, in Houston, Texas, whose theme was "The Many Roles of the ABCA Member" are contained in this report. The five major parts of the document discuss the ABCA member as a job counselor, graduate research advisor, semanticist,…