Reports a survey of sixth, eighth, and tenth graders to assess the relationship between exposure to television advertisements containing sports celebrity endorsements of smokeless tobacco products with attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions about the use of smokeless tobacco. Reports that a simple exposure model does not explain the effects of…

Identifies the competencies that faculty members believe their department chairs need to possess in order to function effectively as academic leaders. Considers whether those competencies are generalizable across different academic departments. Assesses the degree of relationship between perceptions of department chairs' competencies and overall…

Presents the results of a survey of perceived quality of doctoral programs in mass communication as rated by members of the Broadcast Education Association and members of the Association for Communication Administration. (MS)

Two experiments compared signed and written stories by deaf 7- to 15-year-olds with oral and written stories by hearing age-mates. Found that the signed and oral stories had similar discourse structures as indicated by patterns of causal goal-action-outcome episodes. The grammatical and lexical character of deaf students' written stories lagged…

Compares effectiveness of action, verbal, and written communications from schools in 59 South Carolina school districts through a survey of superintendents. No significant differences are found in district evaluation of effectiveness of the three modes of communication. Existing communications are primarily composed of surface types of information…

Describes how, when a vehicle maintenance unit of a public transit agency underwent extensive demographic diversification of its workforce, original workers escalated shop talk and horse play as vehicles of internal power struggles, leading to dysfunction and even violence. Argues that management failed to provide for the need for newly diverse…

Analyzes use of term "professional" in educational documents. Reevaluates term's use in context of contradictory official signals about perceived worth of Scottish teachers and teaching. Concludes term's function principally ideological, its meaning appropriated by parties at interest, resulting in conceptual misunderstanding of…

Submits that interinstitutional research in mass communication exhibits complex, interrelated problems regarding tactics, sampling, data reliability, and causality. Confronts difficulties and suggests ways to deal with them. Draws on storytelling and cognitive aesthetics to broaden the criteria for judging research. Encourages ambitious…

Examines results of a field study investigating the ability of the Texas Special Olympics'"Athletes for Outreach" program to enhance the communication skills and the perceived social competence of participant with mental retardation. Validates the relevancy of the "Athletes for Outreach" program for Special Olympics Texas and…

Examined social influences on the reasoning and rhetorical strategies of fourth graders. Found that the use of argument stratagems snowballed, there were fewer and fewer lines of discussion between successive appearances of a stratagem, and the snowball phenomenon was more pronounced during discussions with open participation than during…

Explores ethnic and gender differences in classroom conversational styles by comparing student involvement in face-to-face and computer-mediated discussions. Finds that white males participated more frequently than other groups in the face-to-face setting, and white women benefited more from computer-mediated communication. Notes Hispanic women…

"Picture Exchange Communication System" (PECS) training was implemented with 5 nonspeaking adults with mental retardation who were not currently using any type of functional communication system. A modified ABAB, single-subject design was used to assess the effectiveness of PECS in enhancing the functional communication skills of these…

The authors compared parent-perceived communication behaviors for formally assessed stages longitudinally for 42 infants at risk for being nonspeaking. They compared perceived communication behaviors at assessed transitions to communicative stages (intentional behavior, intentional communication, symbolic communication) and found systematic…

This chapter challenges forthcoming research on adolescent female sexuality to take more seriously the role of dominant cultural ideologies regarding heterosexuality and to consider its theoretical and methodological implications.

An important resource for educators interested in incorporating material about mass media and race into their teaching might be academic research conducted in universities and media research organizations and published in academic journals. However, because certain forms of racial thinking "saturate" all forms of knowledge production in…