Field research was conducted to evaluate the workgroup meetings of an organization. The evaluation served to determine whether management's established objectives for the meetings were reached and to develop research strategies useful in examining individual communication activities. Two questionnaires (for supervisory/nonsupervisory personnel)…

An adaptation of "communication audit" procedures was used to evaluate the communication patterns at a mental health center (MHC). The evaluation included initial interviews with 28 MHC workers/administrators, a survey of 215 staff members for a communication network analysis, and followup interviews with another 28 persons. The data produced four…

A comparative analysis of two decision making strategies was conducted. One strategy compared alternatives on their best attributes for "the best payoff," while the other strategy called for accepting the first alternative that achieved all minimum cutoff values for all attributes. The subjects, 211 college students, selected a mayoral preference…

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) the perceived effectiveness of written communication from central office administrators to building level administrators in a metropolitan school district, (2) upward communication in…

A study of coordination modes in work group communication was conducted to evaluate and expand leadership contingency models. A total of 106 people in classes and workshops on organizational communication completed seven questionnaires resulting in nine measures of six independent variables representing the following contingency factors from…

Anthropologists have indicated that the need to act politically and to avoid the appearance of such action is marked in egalitarian societies. The perils of confrontation in such societies often foster indirect and highly allusive speech. This paper invesitgates the relationship between direct and indirect speech in an Indo-Fijian community which…

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…

A study was undertaken to assess the extent to which the basic speech communication course fulfilled the needs of students and alumni of a large midwestern university. Specifically, the study sought to discover whether the basic course should be required and whether public speaking, interpersonal communication, or another activity should be the…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 47 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) television and attitudes about crime, (2) attitude measurement in marketing communications, (3) soap operas and liberal education values, (4) the existence of…

An investigation of the communication styles of five groups of university students in China, Japan, Korea, Guam, and Hawaii involved 1,818 students. The students each completed the Communication Style Measure, which contains 51 items that gauge nine communicative behaviors as independent variables: (1) dominant, (2) friendly, (3) attentive, (4)…

Researchers who have attempted to study the functioning of the jury in the United States have been hampered by the absolute confidentiality of jury deliberations. Research methodologies have tried to circumvent this difficulty by using simulated juries, and have focused largely on the influence of the social status of jurors during deliberations.…

Seven successful and seven unsuccessful employment interviews were videotaped and analyzed to discover how communicative behaviors grounded in rhetorical theory contributed to applicant success. The employers completed pre and postinterview questionnaires that helped to assess the effects of the interviews and to control the effects of the…

This paper discusses the intercultural communication body of knowledge and focuses on the ethnicity and mass communication. The orientation and tradition of communication research in the United States is discussed; the findings of some mass communication studies that have subject matter or variables related to mass ethnicity are summarized; the…

This paper presents a critique of current conceptualizations of interpersonal competence, reveals their underlying cultural prescriptions, and proposes a transcultural model of interpersonal communication competence designed to guide the teaching of interpersonal communication as well as research in that area. (FL)

The application of hermeneutic theory to the study of the oral history interview is proposed in this paper. The first section of the paper indicates why the oral interview is central to the approach of the oral historian; it then defines oral history as a communicative process and suggests an approach to investigating the oral interview that uses…