The primary tasks of the ethnographic researcher are to discover, describe, and comparatively analyze different speech communities' ways of speaking. Two general abstractions occurring in ethnographic analyses are normative and cultural. Communicative norms are formulated in analyzing and explaining the "patterned use of speech."…

A study examined the relationship between changes in a person's mode of responsiveness during an interpersonal communication course and his or her ability to predict the behavior of others. First an instrument to identify flexible-responsive individuals was developed. Over a period of 7 years, 163 subjects, undergraduates in a beginning…

A study was conducted to investigate acceptance and openness as possible universal, consequent interpersonal rewards among foreign-born employees who work in United States companies. In this replication of an earlier study using United States-born employees, 42 United States-born and 52 foreign-born employees completed a booklet containing 20…

To illustrate the experience of a nonprofit organization whose high respect for theory and research shaped the design and implementation of a major public relations program, this paper reports on a University of Michigan program to arrest erosion of the state financial support in a period of worsening economic problems. The next five sections of…

A study was conducted to examine relationships between communication apprehension (CA) levels and the sending of messages within an organization. It was expected that high CA would be more prevalent among support personnel than among managers or professionals, and that high CAs would report less communication participation and satisfaction. It was…

To determine the number of journal articles authored by women and related to women and communication, a content analysis was made of communication journals from 1970 to 1984. The following journals were analyzed: "Central States Speech Journal,""Communication Education,""Communication Monographs,""Communication Quarterly,""Human Communication…

A study investigated the importance of brief contemplation as a factor in the accuracy of judgments about other people, based on their nonverbal appearance. The following questions were addressed: (1) Are observers who are given time to contemplate the significance of nonverbal cues more accurate in their perceptual judgments than observers who…

The results of three projects concerned with auditory word recognition and the structure of the lexicon are reported in this paper. The first project described was designed to test experimentally several specific predictions derived from MACS, a simulation model of the Cohort Theory of word recognition. The second project description provides the…

The current development of a communication theory known as coordinated management of meaning is presented in this report. The communication process is modeled as an open system; human actors constitute component subsystems with the ability to organize their cognitions into constitutive and regulative rules. The conjoining of individuals' rule sets…

In the attempt to examine motivations for the interpersonal diffusion of news events, two sets of data were collected. First, 82 college students completed an open-ended survey regarding their reasons for passing on news events; second, another 200 college students were given the list of reasons previously compiled and were asked to rate their…

Three methods of conducting television pilot testing research--the evaluation of television programs for their potential in attracting target and general audiences--are compared and contrasted in the three sections of this report. The introductory section provides an overview of the research, outlines the goals and objectives of the pilot…

A study investigated whether the interaction patterns of high consensus groups differed significantly from the patterns of low consensus groups in the final stage of a decision-making task. Eighty-four college students placed into 19 groups were told to select a social problem, investigate it, and develop a solution. At the end of the three-week…

A study sought to determine the extent to which social workers were called upon to engage in applied communication tasks and to determine various perceptions that social workers held of their responsibilities in the area of applied communication. The 500 respondents selected from a list of Michigan-licensed certified social workers filled out…

This paper argues that communication researchers could benefit from incorporating a rules approach as a supplement to more traditional methods of organizational analysis. Two major flaws in the methodology of traditional organizational analysis are noted: failing to account for actor or participant meanings--how the actor interprets relationships,…

Defining communication fidelity as the communication of ideas by one person in a way that results in the construction of congruent ideas by the recipient of that communication, this paper describes a model of basic communication based on this construct that will provide specific information about communication problems. The paper also discusses…