Digital Commons Network^™

Notions Of Distance: Communication Constraints In Long-Distance Dating Relationships, Jenny Marie Farrell

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study addressed communication constraints perceived by individuals in long-distance dating relationships (LDDRs) and how these constraints are managed. Internal constraints are identified within the boundaries of the individual or relationship and external constraints are those that originate from outside the boundaries of the individual or relationship. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 27 participants; ages ranged from 18-35. Participants reported perceiving 11 internal constraints (mediated communication, avoidance, talk habits, physical absence, emotions, view of outsiders, uncertainty and expectations, effort, notions of distance, visits, and miscellaneous) and five external constraints (schedules, social network, finances, and technology, miscellaneous). Participants reported managing …

When Two Become One: Marital Couples' Public Performances And Couple Identity, Carrie D. Kennedy-Lightsey

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Communication researchers know little about marital couples' public performances, or how marital couples communicate as a nonsummative whole when in the presence of important others (e.g., friends, family, co-workers). Two studies were conducted to examine marital couples' public performances from a Communication Theory of Identity (CTI) (Hecht, 1993) framework. In the first study, 153 marital couples completed self-report measures to assess how marital couples' attachment styles and relationship awareness are related to identity gaps during public performances as well as how identity gaps relate to a variety of outcomes including communication satisfaction, feelings of being understood, conversational appropriateness, relationship satisfaction, …

Advertising Connoisseurs: Children's Active Engagement With And Enjoyment Of Television Advertising, Margaret-Anne Lawlor

Articles

The literature pertaining to advertising and children has tended to focus on how advertising affects children at cognitive, attitudinal and behavioural levels. A key element of the debate has been the extent to which children understand advertising as a mode of commercial communication, and the potential associated outcomes such as advertising scepticism and pester power. This paper adopts a different approach by exploring the extent to which television advertising can constitute a resource for a child's own use and enjoyment. As part of an interpretive study of a group of Irish children aged seven to nine years which explores their …

Multi-Level Trust Game With “Insider” Communication, Roman M. Sheremeta, Jingjing Zhang

ESI Working Papers

This experiment studies the internal and external effects of communication in a multilevel trust game. In this trust game, the first player can send any part of his endowment to the second player. The amount sent gets tripled. The second player decides how much to send to the third player. The amount is again tripled, and the third player then decides the allocation among the three players. The baseline treatment with no communication shows that the first and second players send significant amounts and the third player reciprocates. When we allow communication only between the second and third players, the …

Prayer Life Of A Professor, E. James Baesler

Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Publications

[Abstract from pre-print]

Borrowing from the ethnographic methodologies of Coles and Goodall, this autoethnographic account describes interconnections among a Professor's personal prayer life, teaching, and research. The contextual frame for the story is episodes and observations from a 12-year span of time, encompassing post academic tenure and promotion to present. The recurrent theme is that prayer touches and transforms all life, including content and approaches to teaching, and the direction and substance of research.

Adult Texting In Context : Exploring Norms For Mature Users Of Text-Messaging Technologies., Angela M. Barlow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

An online survey exploring the patterns of adult text-message use was completed by 150 traditional college age young adults ages 18-24 and 171 adults ages 25-68. Because youth traditionally are among the first group to adopt new communication technologies, much research has been conducted among the adolescent and young adult population regarding the prevalence and importance of text-messaging; however, a research deficit exists regarding adult textmessage use. Data gathered from this survey were categorized and analyzed for emergent content regarding the use of text-messaging, what roll texting plays in adult's communication patterns, the sociological impact of text-messaging on survey respondents, …

The Cowl - V. 73 - N. 11 - Dec 4, 2008

The Cowl

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Volume 73 - Number 11 - December 4, 2008. 32 pages.

Communication, Crisis, And Identity: Dialectical Tensions In Family Narratives About Hurricane Katrina, Laura Poole Rogers

Dissertations

In this study victims of Hurricane Katrina ordered their experiences with the crisis into meaningful themes which expressed their values, actions, inactions, occupations, needs and losses, and feelings. In interviews participants explained what happened, when it happened, how they responded, how they thought they should have responded, and how they handled situations surrounding the storm. Narratives about situations after the storm revealed descriptions of their and others' relationships in interactions with representatives of larger social units. The dialectical analysis revealed dialectical tensions that emphasized participants' dynamic and changing relationships and identities. Dialectical analysis of narratives about those relationships revealed dialectical …

Self-Talk And Cognitive Strategy: Exploring Relationships Between Self-Talk, Cognitive Strategy, And Factors That Cause Change, Justin Sebens

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Appropriate use of self-talk and cognitive strategy has been shown to improve individual performance on a variety of tasks by increasing confidence, focus, and awareness. Likewise, depending on its use, self-talk and cognitive strategy has also been shown to be detrimental to performance. Little research has been undertaken to explore the relationship between self-talk and cognitive strategy and the factors that precipitate changes between the two. To fill this gap, this study examined long distance runners to determine the factors that cause change in self-talk and cognitive strategy as well as the relationship between the two if change occurs. Additionally, …

New Yoga Studio Encourages Positive Impact On Community Through Communication And Leadership, Shauna Stelzer

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study is to explore the ways in which a well-attended Yoga studio can inspire health, wellness and the desire to contribute to one’s community. Members of the community who have been attending Yoga for varying amounts of time were given the opportunity to comment on their experiences and their heightened communication abilities with community members as a result of their attendance in Yoga classes. Additionally, studio owners gave their thoughts and opinions on the businesses in their community, as well as expressed their beliefs and knowledge of transformations that they have witnessed in the community because …

The Drama Of Collaborative Creativity: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Hollywood Film Making-Of Documentaries, Robert M. González Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Current creativity research is dominated by attention to the individual, with increasingly less attention paid to creativity in its context, in groups, and in filmmaking as a collaboratively creative enterprise. This study answers the research call to explore filmmaking as an exemplar for collaborative creativity. Utilizing the stories told on DVD extras on special edition releases of feature films, this study analyzes how collaborative creativity is storied. In turn, these stories reveal specific communication forms, practices, and strategies that enrich theoretical conceptions of collaborative creativity. Following dramatistic concepts elaborated by Kenneth Burke, this rhetorical analysis finds three emergent patterns of …

Mentoring Dialogues: An Investigation Of The Dialectical Tensions And Management Strategies In Mentoring Relationships, Paul J. Kosempel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the past 30 years, mentoring has gained perhaps the largest recognition of any phenomenon related to career success. Much of the current research that has explored mentoring relationships has been conducted in fields other than communication studies, although better communication is often the recommended solution to improve mentoring. The majority of research has focused on the outcomes of mentoring relationships, rather than the process of mentoring relationships. Mentoring has also not been studied through a relational dialectics perspective. This study explored the communication dynamics within mentoring relationships through a relational dialectics theoretical lens. The study utilized multiple methods including …

The Cowl - V. 73 - N. 7 - Oct 30, 2008

The Cowl

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Volume 73 - Number 7 - October 30, 2008. 32 pages.

The Cowl - V. 73 - N. 5 - Oct 9, 2008

The Cowl

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Volume 73 - Number 5 - October 9, 2008. 32 pages.

Real Lies, White Lies And Gray Lies: Towards A Typology Of Deception, Erin M. Bryant

Human Communication and Theatre Faculty Research

Despite its aversive label, deception is an extremely common social behavior that the average person performs on a daily basis (Camden, Motley, & Wilson, 1984; DePaulo, Kashy, Kirkendol, Wyer, & Epstein, 1996; Turner, Edgley, & Omstead, 1975). In fact, the use of white lies is so widespread they are often viewed as a form of communication competency that is necessary to successfully negotiate social interactions (Camden et al, 1984; Di Battista, 1994; Knapp & Comedena, 1975; Knapp, Hart, & Dennis, 1974). This study aimed to explore how college students perceive white lies and differentiate them from other types of lies …

Hiv/Aids: An Opportunistic Infection Of Globalization?, David H. Lee

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Interpersonal Cognitive Complexity And Cross-Cultural Dating: An Application Of Personal Constructs Psychology, Jennifer Gelar

Senior Honors Theses

The purpose of this study is to investigate interpersonal cognitive complexity, which is an individual difference variable describing a person’s cognitive system, and its role in cross-cultural relationships, particularly Caucasian-American males’ willingness to date a woman from another country. This study is an application of Personal Constructs Psychology and employs Crockett’s Role Category Questionnaire to tap into participants’ levels of social perception through the investigation of interpersonal cognitive complexity scores.

Pediatric Residents' Use Of Jargon During Counseling About Newborn Genetic Screening Results, Michael Farrell, Lindsay Deuster, Jodi Donovan, Stephanie Christopher

College of Professional Studies Faculty Research and Publications

OBJECTIVE. The goal was to investigate pediatric residents’ usage of jargon during discussions about positive newborn screening test results.

METHODS. An explicit-criteria abstraction procedure was used to identify jargon usage and explanations in transcripts of encounters between residents and standardized parents of a fictitious infant found to carry cystic fibrosis or sickle cell hemoglobinopathy. Residents were recruited from a series of educational workshops on how to inform parents about positive newborn screening test results. The time lag from jargon words to explanations was measured by using “statements,” each of which contained 1 subject and 1 predicate.

RESULTS. Duplicate abstraction revealed …

Developments In Urban Environmental Information Perception And Communication, Kostas Karatzas, J. Lee

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Urban environmental information (EI) is related to knowledge concerning the status, the pressures and the consequences of environmental quality parameters to human life and the urban surroundings. One of the most important aspects in the life cycle of EI is knowledge generation and flow, data management and information dissemination between ICT systems and environmental actors, players, or interested parties. In the present paper, urban air quality serves as the application domain, for which the following issues are discussed, • Analysis of the way that environmental information is related to urban structures (roads, buildings, etc) • Investigation of the spatial and …

Organizational Culture, Workplace Incivility, And Turnover : The Impact Of Human Resources Practices., Dana Cosby Simmons 1969-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the relationship between two communication-related dimensions of organizational culture, workplace incivility, and turnover. In particular, it investigates the impact that four human resources practices have on the relationship between incivility and turnover. These practices are (a) training, (b) formal policies, (c) grievance procedures, and (d) vertical hierarchy. Employing data from the National Organizations Survey (2002), the study provides a conceptual model suggesting that "soft" measures such as organizational culture and human resources practices impact the bottom line of an organization. The dissertation is divided into five chapters. Chapter One provides an introduction to the research problem and …

Hip Hop Is Dead: The Rhetoric Of Hip Hop, Kalyana Champlain

Senior Honors Projects

There is no doubt that Hip Hop has become a most influential international force. This animal has had many faces: two of these faces have been as a political tool as displayed by Public Enemy, and as a therapeutic release-- as I discovered while in AmeriCorps interning at AS220 for a program called Hip Hop 220, in which we took underprivileged youth and helped them to channel their energy through this art form. However, there is a dark side to this culture that includes extreme misogyny, self- sabotage, hatred, and an unhealthy obsession with status. As I reflected on these …

Teaching Effective Communication Principles: Characteristics Of Effective Preaching To Young Adult In A North American Context, Matthew William Gamble

Human Subject Research Archive

The purpose of this dissertation is to help preachers to be more effective in the pulpit. The characteristics for what make a preacher effective in the pulpit are explored and considered in this project. The seminar: Preaching to the iPod Mind was presented to four different groups of preachers in the North American Division. A survey was provided to each participant.

The Cowl - V. 72 - N. 24 - May 1, 2008

The Cowl

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Volume 72 - Number 24 - May 1, 2008. 28 pages.

Cancer Rumor Effects On Sense Making, Nicole M. Robinson

Theses

A cancer rumor is collective sense making in response to uncertainty or threat regarding a cancer diagnosis. This study explored the types of cancer rumors in circulation, how these rumors spread, why people believed them, and how people made sense of these rumors in order to cope. Web survey responses from 188 participants found that both negative and positive rumors were spread. These rumors were believed due to perceived source credibility and plausibility. While participants held more faith in medical sources, 71 percent changed their behavior after hearing a rumor from a non-medical person. Results suggested that rumor participation aided …

Living A Tattooed Life: The Female Experience, Kara G. Cleveland

Communication

The present research is rooted in Human Science, and employed the epistemology of Constructionism, as well as the theoretical perspective of Social Construction of Reality. I used Narrative Inquiry as methodology and conversational interviewing as my method of collecting data. I interviewed six women who provided narratives of their lived experience of constructing their identities through tattoos. Three emergent themes, along with three sub-themes, are discussed in regards to the lived experiences of tattooed women: (1) becoming tattooed constructs who you are; (2) becoming tattooed develops relational identity with (a) friends, (b) the tattoo community, (c) family; and (3) the …

Keeping The Home Fires Burning: The Effects Of Military Induced Separations On Marital Intimacy From A Female Perspective, Deborah J. Cynar

Communication

In this study, a convenience sample of 56 female, married, military wives in northwestern community responded to a survey questionnaire concerning intimacy promoting communication skills, marital satisfaction, and military induced separations. The results indicated a strong correlation between marital satisfaction and intimacy promoting communication skills. This study also explores the difference between the type and frequency of military induced separations and their influence on marital satisfaction and intimacy promoting communication skills. To further describe this military population, several post hoc tests for difference found significance between military branch affiliation, and between those who had or had not received premarital counseling …

Who Is In Charge Here? A Feminist Communicology Of Followership And Leadership In An Academic Organization, Robert Locke Jordan

Communication

This feminist critical study explicates the ways that followership is conceptualized at an academic organization in the Pacific Northwest. Through the use of qualitative methods, stories were solicited providing descriptions of events that define the hegemonically masculine ways that followership is conceptualized, suggesting the need for a feminist critical analysis and revisioning. A number of themes emerged from conversational interviews including: conceptual verisimilitude, archetypes of leadership, alternative conceptions of followership, the role of action in leadership and followership, and the emergent organization. The capta gathered from this qualitative study suggest a revisioning of human organization and recognizes leadership and followership …

Major League Baseball Franchises And Their Minor League Players, Maintaining A Relationship On And Off The Field, Michelle Keating

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In today's professional arena, organized sports have grown to become institutionalized and highly organized through corporations in a multi-billion dollar industry. Through the use of in depth interviews completed online, this study investigated the role franchise communication plays in the development of nineteen minor league players' relationships within the Major League Baseball (MLB) sports industry. Results found that players feel their organizations disproportionately help some players achieve success over others and withhold information. As players, they felt they have a limited voice regarding the direction of their careers. Despite a difficult working environment, the players' desire to achieve success and …

The Cowl - V. 72 - N. 20 - Apr 3, 2008

The Cowl

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Volume 72 - Number 20 - April 3, 2008. 28 pages.

The Impact Of Change Messages On The Commitment To A Change: An Analysis Of It Professionals In India And Malaysia, Humayun Rashid

Student Scholarship

Affective commitment of individuals is critical for the success of an organizational change initiative. In order to secure this desired form of commitment, managers spend a great deal of time and money implementing elaborate change management and communication strategies, often with little success. Three important types of change messages that are expected to drive commitment to change are:: (1) the organizational need for change (discrepancy), (2) the support of organizational leaders (principal support), and (3) the benefit of the change to the individual (personal valence). In this quantitative survey-based study conducted at a large global bank, we analyzed the perceptions …