Furthering research on the explanations for gender differences in nonverbal expression, a study investigated the types of posed smiles depicted in sorority and fraternity photographs, and related them to whether or not the subject held a leadership position in that organization. Five sororities and five fraternities at a large eastern university…

Exploring the relationship of communication apprehension (CA) to culture, age, and gender, a study examined 368 United States mainland children (186 males and 182 females, ages 5-11, in a public elementary school in Bowling Green, Kentucky) and 373 Puerto Rican children (172 males and 201 females from public elementary schools in the Gurabo school…

A study represented an initial attempt to assess the functional equivalence of two techniques for compliance-gaining research in the classroom, the constructionist approach and the strategy checklist approach. First, a system for coding teachers' message constructions was developed. Then those messages were analyzed to assess the relative…

"Text and Performance Quarterly" (TPQ) is the new name (beginning 1989) of a journal that started in 1980 under the name "Literature in Performance." This partial (promotional) issue of "TPQ" consists of a single article from the January 1989 issue that briefly explains the background and scope of the re-defined…

To examine older women's appearance self-perceptions, a study surveyed two groups of older and younger subjects. The control group consisted of 93 female undergraduate students at a state university in West Virginia. The test group consisted of 85 non-institutionalized females aged 55 to 93, from senior centers, craft groups, church groups, and…

To explore the issue of sensitivity as it affects researchers, and to determine if the standard norms for talking about intimate issues in romantic relationships would be true of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) phenomenon, a pilot study surveyed 246 undergraduates from a medium-sized Mid-Atlantic university who were enrolled in…

To compare differences between types of friendships on an assortment of communication and situational variables, a study was conducted that involved pairs of four types of intimate friends: male-male, female-female, male-female with romantic interest, and male-female without romantic interest. Subjects, 61 pairs of college students, completed…

Interviews were conducted with adolescents (age 10-18) and with one parent of each to determine whether differences between parents and their adolescent children on political information and news media use had any impact at all on the amount of discussion about politics that goes on between them. The period during which the data were collected was…

From the perspective of organizational behavior, mentoring received little attention until the mid 1970s. Since that time, the topic has been praised, criticized, analyzed, and in some organizations formally endorsed. A survey of 1,200 leading corporate executives found that two thirds of those surveyed had a mentor, that the number of these…

To determine the perceived intercultural commnication problems arising during three meetings of North American, Latin American, and Caribbean businessmen, business professionals were asked to assess their international counterparts in terms of (1) source credibility, (2) locus of control, (3) competitive posture, (4) communication certainty, (5)…

Future developments in communication technology promise to have both positive and negative effects on information sources, messages, the media, and audiences. An increased tendency toward monopolistic control, for example, might accompany improvement in information management. A significant problem already in evidence among information…

A study was conducted to determine the extent of communication apprehension among students in pharmacy schools across the United States. Fifty-one schools submitted usable completed surveys. The self-reported survey measured the level of students' shyness, and the perceived importance of interpersonal, group, and public speaking forms of…

A study was conducted to describe male and female participation and success in both debate and individual events national competition and to identify areas of gender-based inequity. Data from three 1984 national tournaments (National Debate Tournament, American Forensic Association's National Individual Events Tournament, and the National Forensic…

As a step toward the study of invention, an investigation dealt not with public arguments or the results of invention, but with arguments that may have occurred to the rhetor but were discarded. To avoid problems of self-presentation and retrospection, thinking aloud and reconstructive protocols were avoided in favor of providing 37 college…

To examine perspectives of change in individual-organizational socialization, a study used the retrospective interview technique (RIT) to reconstruct the history and process of individuals' socialization experiences over an 8-month period. Using the RIT, researchers asked subjects, 28 entering graduate students enrolled in three communication…