This study examined the feedback choices made by 12 professors which they executed in their freshman/sophomore level speech communication performance-based courses. Each instructor tape recorded and coded two 10-minute feedback sessions. Each teacher also responded in free writing form about self-correcting perceptions subsequent to the coding of…

This series of articles, focusing on the Western Torres Strait Islander people, presents the following: "A Brief Introduction to Torres Strait Culture" (Rod Kennedy); "Some Guidelines for Relating to Torres Strait Islanders" (Rod Kennedy); "One Mouth Two Hands" (Rod Kennedy); "My Trading Friend in the Village of…

This paper describes the evolution of a group research project undertaken by six communication graduate students, using the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF), a collection of primary source materials on over 250 predominantly pre-literate cultures representing all major areas of the world. The paper narrates the students' research processes, from…

A case study analyzed a young organization to determine how the communicative acts of the general manager are primary in the creation of the company culture and how well interpretive methods contribute to research on organizational culture. The company investigated manufactures custom products, employs approximately 175 skilled craftsmen and…

Improving communications between administration and staff members is an urgent, ongoing need. Schools should adopt a communications philosophy in conjunction with continuing communication effectiveness. These evaluations must have clear and understandable objectives, mainly to pinpoint communication strengths and weaknesses. All essential…

Two studies tested the hypothesis that the annual salaries of women in public relations are significantly less than those of men of equal education, professional experience, and length of employment with their current organization. A second hypothesis included organizational role status as a variable. The first study surveyed members of four…

Critical Incident Technique (CIT) involves the collection of real-world examples of behavior that characterize either very effective or very ineffective performance of some activity. The principal advantage of the CIT is that it generates data based on actual behavior rather than on a particular researcher's subjectivity. The CIT has much to offer…

An overview of the literature in family communication since 1976 reveals that a huge body of research continues to focus on the family context but that little of this research is being conducted by scholars whose primary interest is communication. Communication researchers could make a contribution to family communication research if they…

To explore the impact of communication styles on physiological health, coronary-prone Type A and low-stress Type B subjects were administered two surveys testing reactions to hypothetical, stressful situations. While not revealing a correlation between Type A behavior and specific perceptions of, or strategies for, dealing with compliance-gaining…

The establishment of First Amendment protection for statements of opinion has extended the category of protected expression, but judicially created tests for distinguishing fact from opinion provide limited guidance for judges and place little constraint on judicial interpretation of language. In writing the Supreme Court's majority opinion in…

A study determined the relationship between communicator style and argumentativeness and clarified the relationship between psychological gender and communicator style. Three hundred and fourteen college students enrolled in introductory health and communication courses responded to the Communicator Style Measure, the Argumentativeness Scale, and…

The back-propagation neural network learning procedure was applied to the analysis and recognition of speech. Because this learning procedure requires only examples of input-output pairs, it is not necessary to provide it with any initial description of speech features. Rather, the network develops on its own set of representational features…

A study investigated the relationships among dyadic apprehension and levels of loneliness, dyadic apprehension and affinity-seeking competence, and affinity-seeking competence and levels of loneliness. Subjects, 198 undergraduate students, completed the Revised University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Loneliness Scale, the Personal Report of…

S. Jackson and S. Jacobs's criticism of "single message" designs in communication research served as a framework for a study that examined the differences between various sequential request paradigms. The study sought to answer the following questions: (1) What were the most naturalistic request sequences assured to replicate…

A study examined the current United States Supreme Court's treatment of the legal concept of freedom of expression by exploring its decisions and opinions on a quantitative basis. The individual votes and the opinions or legal rationales of the justices were recorded for the 43 First Amendment cases decided by the court between the 1981…