Approximately 200 employees of small and medium sized businesses participated in a study to determine if their task characteristics affected the communication network roles they enact. Specifically, the study investigated the effects of variety, autonomy, task identity, feedback, dealing with others, and friendship opportunities on the network…

Drawing from data generated in more than 100 hours of interaction within 15 leaderless groups, a study investigated the interaction characteristics of emergent leadership--leadership that is earned through face-to-face encounters in a group. Each group was instructed to reach consensus decisions on two tasks, both of which provided the possibility…

A study was conducted to explore how males and females differ in their use of interpersonal conflict management styles. Subjects were 71 male and 76 female students from an introductory interpersonal communication course at a large midwestern state university. They were instructed to think of an important relationship with either an opposite-sex…

Defining communication reticence as anxiousness due to a lack of basic communication skills, a study was conducted to determine (1) whether significant differences exist in the distribution of sex roles between reticent and nonreticent populations, (2) whether reticents and nonreticents differ in masculinity and femininity, and (3) which qualities…

Social support in the workplace may take many forms, and the form it takes may be related to the extent to which it buffers the relationship between occupational stressors and individual strains. A study was conducted to examine social support given to subordinates from their supervisors. Nurses (N=225) from seven hospitals completed measures of…

To increase knowledge about the nature of news (particularly its valuation and presentation conventions), to enrich understanding of communication conventions in our society through the study of news communication, and to fashion a tool that can be used to charge and change such conventions, a study examined the content of all news articles…

A study was conducted to determine the effects of mildly self-disparaging humor on audiences' perceptions when it is used by speakers perceived to be of differing credibility (ethos) levels. Responses by 27 students who were potential subjects of the experiment were used to construct a credibility scale. The most credible speaker, a university…

Aided by her advisor, a communication apprehensive college senior majoring in speech communication at a small rural college developed a project designed to help herself and other apprehensives through cognitive modification. Six students enrolled in a speech communication course who were classified as communication apprehensive by the Personal…

A review of literature and two surveys, one of college students and one of a random sample of adults, were used to examine four aspects of media embedded interactions (social behavior in front of a TV or radio): their functions, their environment, their effects, and the reactions of the interactants to them. Television is seen as performing a…

Conventional wisdom holds that the right-wing John Birch Society disintegrated during the late 1960s. An examination of the society's periodical readership indicates that it has, instead, expanded. Moreover, this expansion occurred during a period of ideological dissonance for the organization, a fact that undermines confidence in the explanation…

The citation study technique, known as bibliometrics, was undertaken in this study to evaluate scholarly exchange among the core journals in the field of communication. The journals studied were "Central States Speech Journal,""Communication Research,""Journal of Broadcasting,""Journal of…

Because cognition is inherently inaccessible to observers, researchers interested in cognitive approaches to argumentation frequently rely on self-reports for data. Opponents to self-reports argue that such data have very limited value. They claim that when subjects are put in a position where they have to tell more than they can know, they…

An examination of a year's worth of editorial cartoons portraying the U.S. hostage crisis in Iran indicates a surprising lack of coverage or treatment of the deposed Shah and his subsequent admission into the United States as factors precipitating the crisis. Throughout the crisis, cartoonists focused on providing readers with some insight into…

Based on research which suggests that individuals transmit good news more than bad news and that people are motivated to project a positive image of themselves, 48 college students participated in a study to test the hypothesis that individuals would be more conscientious in giving information when future social interaction was anticipated.…

To identify conditions that make a conversational interaction constructive--in the sense that the participants can find the way toward the success of what they wanted to accomplish--two situations were examined. In one, a professional researcher explained her data to a statistician. In the other, three groups of two people cooperated with each…