On the premise that union election campaigns on college campuses can provide useful lessons for public relations practitioners, this paper examines literature pertaining to organizing efforts in order to discover public relations problems that can be posed by the reciprocal nature of the influences between the internal and external audiences…

Because the use of tobacco contributes to a large number of deaths each year in the United States, a current research project at the University of Iowa tests the application of a number of theoretical ideas--including social bonding, diffusion, and the spiral of silence--and attempts to develop new ideas in an effort to reduce smoking. The…

In a sociolinguistic study of five transcripts of high school discussions, two analyses were conducted. The first was a detailed qualitative analysis of the data, which combined paralinguistic features with three perspectives: a speech act analysis, a conversation analysis, and an interaction analysis. In the second, more quantitative analysis,…

Recent retrieval of pre-nineteenth century feminist thought provides a telling lesson in the politics of knowledge creation and control. From a feminist perspective, very little research carried out within the critical research paradigm questions the "basic assumptions, conventional wisdom, media myths and the accepted way of doing…

Families are rule-governed systems of interdependent individuals whose interaction follows an intricate pattern of behavior. Communication patterns in a family reflect and emerge from contradictions in rules. A function may be defined as something that a system does and must do if it is not to break down. For instance identity and stability…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 32 titles discuss a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the elderly audience for religious broadcasting; (2) response to television advertising of directly marketed products; (3) the effectiveness of documentary film…

Despite the increase in the number of women entering the work force, the organizational setting is not typically conducive to upward mobility for most women. According to a variety of research studies, the impact of sex role stereotyping clearly suggests a set of communication behaviors appropriate for male managers and a different set appropriate…

To learn more about the kind of learning that occurs when students read and receive response to their writing, a study was designed to develop an analytical system by which to describe the language of writing groups. Nine writing groups were examined, two from grade 5, four from grade 8, and three from grades 10 through 12. The data collected…

To understand how computer conferencing can be used to meld communication and education among remotely located high-level professions, an ongoing exploratory study started to collect data from participants in an advanced adult education course conducted primarily via computer-mediated communication in the area of top level management. The…

A study was conducted to assess the skill of students in identifying meanings of facial expressions in photographs used in the Facial Meaning Sensitivity Test (FMST). Subjects were 55 speech pathology students, 39 nursing students, and 36 speech communication students. The first part of the three part test asked subjects to match 10 photographs…

To determine the areas in which communication affects prison environments and prison inmates, interviews were conducted with 21 adult male inmates shortly after their admission into a federal maximum security institution. The interviews were semistructured, addressing such issues as (1) perceptions of fellow inmates and staff; (2) additional…

Four portfolio managers who handle common stocks were observed in a study that examined the preference of an alternative decision making process in an information overload situation. The week of observation was arranged so that the portfolio manager focused primarily on the decision making portion of the work rather than on the presentation and…

To determine if an interviewer's orientation toward satisfaction and commitment actually produced different interviewee reactions in these two areas, 20 interviewers conducted an informative and persuasive interview with two different sets of five interviewees (physical education majors). The Conversation Self-Report Inventory (CSRI) was used to…

Employing a variety of perspectives and methodological techniques, the chapters in this book focus on an area of research concerned with analyzing the organization of and relationship between qualities of social cognition and communicative interaction. The 11 chapters of the book discuss the following topics: (1) the development of children's…

As the fourth in a series of investigations of teacher power in the classroom, a study focused primarily on extending and refining the classification of behavior alteration techniques (BATs) and behavior alteration messages (BAMs) that teachers report as representative of the classroom environment. The study took place in three phases. First,…