Interpersonal and Small Group Communication Commons^™

The Development Of Cross-Sex Friendships: An In-Depth Look At Rawlins' Model Of Friendship Development, Corina Franz

Masters Theses

The following study examines the development of three cross-sex friendships through in-depth interviews. The development of cross-sex friendship has been neglected in much of the research, and Rawlins' Model of Friendship Development has been assumed to fit the development of cross-sex friendships. This study compares the development of these friendships to the friendship development model. The results show that much of the development of cross-sex friendships has characteristics similar to Rawlins' model, yet the model does not address all the developmental issues cross-sex friends encounter. Limitations to the study and suggestions for future research are presented.

Aggressive Communication, Parental Communication, And Sibling Communication, Kristi K. Eustice

Masters Theses

The family is often seen as the center of instruction for children and the base for learning communication patterns. Aggressive communication is often seen in the family, especially as a parenting method. In this thesis, the current state of available literature on aggressive communication in the family is examined. This includes parenting styles, communication relationships between one parent and one child, and the negative effects verbal aggressive communication has on children. A t-test is used to research the responses of 100 students who have verbally aggressive parents. At 2.59, the t-test supports the hypothesis that parenting communication styles concerning aggressiveness …

Self-Disclosure Within Intimate Romantic Relationships: Determining Relevant Relational Factors, Gretchen L. Clark

Masters Theses

The Romantic Intimacy Survey assessed the value of self-disclosure in intimate romantic relationships. Males and females place a stronger disclosure importance in specific intimate relationships, such as mom/female guardian, friends from college, friends from high school, previous romantic partners, dad/male guardian, cross-gender friends, and siblings. In addition, females place more disclosure importance than males on specific intimate relationships. These specific relationships included siblings, current roommates, instructors, and peers within social organizations. Males and females categorize relationships into different factors when assessed by a factor analysis. Males and females also thought different relationships had disclosure importance. Males thought adult friends should …

Social Support Among Women In Families: A Descriptive Study Of Support In Intergenerational Relationships, Gina L. Bauswell

Masters Theses

This study examines the effects of social support in intergenerational relationships among women in families. The research examines ethnography as a study, some of the benefits of research done in intergenerational communication, changes in this communication over the time span of the intergenerational relationships, the transmission of this communication, social support, the positive effects of the phenomenon of this type of communication for all those participating in this dynamic process, and the heuristic value of this research. The participants were forty women in my extended family, and this study is based upon their answers to a questionnaire and focus group …

Interpersonal Solidarity In Relationships: A Cultural Analysis Of Lawyers Vs. Sports Agents, Andrea L. Cairns

Masters Theses

The cultural affects on relationship solidarity and satisfaction in relationships between lawyers and their clients, and sports agents and their professional athlete clients was examined. The results were gathered through a process of correlation tests and frequency report tables. All four groups of subjects were asked to complete a twenty questions survey which contained variables such as interpersonal solidarity, relational satisfaction, and communicative patterns of interaction. The results indicated that the two types of relationships are adversely co-dependent with respect to self-disclosure and it's relationship to interpersonal solidarity within a client-agent relationship.

Importance Of Nonverbal Communication In The Employment Interview, Michelle E. Milano

Masters Theses

The employment interview includes elements that focus on nonverbal communication. Females and males view these nonverbal cues differently. A total of 22 male and 16 female employment interviewers completed quantitative and qualitative surveys concerning nonverbal cues. The data were analyzed using factor analysis, t-tests, and thematic analysis. Five factors, including self-presentation, coverbal cues, appearance, touch, and interviewee sex, emerged from the factor analysis. At 0.05, the t-tests show that females do perceive more nonverbal cues than do males. The qualitative results provide further insight into the quantitative results. These findings show the importance of nonverbal cues during an employment interview.

Historical Romances: An Analysis Of Co-Constructed Narratives From Engaged Couples, Katie Himes

Masters Theses

By studying the manner in which romantic partners tell accounts of their relationship events, researchers can gain insight into the process of relational development. This study examines how five engaged couples socially construct their own shared reality. Using critical incidents, couples first individually described three critical incidents common to engaged couples, including: their first meeting, worst fight, and decision to become a mutually exclusive couple. Next, couples collaborated to produce a shared narrative of significant events in the relationship. Through content analysis, the use of conflict avoidance is examined as a means of creating the collective reality. This research provides …

Intercultural Romantic Couples' Interactive Construction Of Relational Culture, Amie D. Kincaid

Masters Theses

This study explores intercultural romantic couples and their interactive construction of relational culture. Qualitative methods of inquiry appeared most useful for identifying the processes involved in the social construction of intimates' shared reality and, so, both Conversation Analysis and Joint Interviews were utilized. Five romantic couples whose partners were socilaized within different cultural communities participated in the study. Findings of this study suggest that intercultural romantic couples import cultural resources from their individual cultures into their joint relational culture. These cultural resources included foods, traditions, language, and values. Findings of ths study also suggest that two types of communicative episodes, …

Co-Opertition: Competitive Communication Behavior During A Cooperative Task, Daniel M. Hlavac

Masters Theses

A combined effort of two classes at separate universities was examined. Each class boasted six groups which were paired with another group at the other university. These teams used computer mediated communication to engage in a cooperative task. The communications between groups were analyzed using conversational analytic techniques to reveal a competitive communication pattern. The results show that a lack of communication can produce competitive behaviors even in situations intended to nurture cooperation. Future concerns should focus on teaching groups to use computer mediated communication (CMC) to its fullest potential by recognizing and accounting for the critical differences between CMC …

The Effects Of Sex Guilt And Communication On Condom Use, Renée M. Souva

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to determine whether sex guilt and communication were related to condom use. Past research has examined variables that affect condom use and has found that individuals who communicate more about sexual matters, and individuals who have low sex guilt, have been found to use condoms/contraceptives more consistently. This study examined sex guilt and communication and how they predict condom use. The participants were 80 female undergraduates recruited from psychology classes at Eastern Illinois University. Mosher's revised Sex Guilt Inventory and Catania's Health Protective Communication Scale were administered along with a question that assessed condom …

Young Children's Talk At Play: Orientation To Self And Orientation To The Joint Exigencies Of Conversation, Paige K. Parker

Masters Theses

This study employed a conversation analytic approach to determine how children in naturally constructed play episodes use language as an object of play and how children in their naturally occurring talk display orientation to their own individual activities and others' social actions. The participants were thirty-nine kindergarten and first grade students at South Elementary School in Marshall, Illinois. The study is based upon fifteen hours of conversation collected during recess periods. Relevant segments from the corpus were transcribed according to an adapted version of Jefferson's Transcript Notation System (1984). The findings suggested that (1) the groups of children used language …

Self-Disclosure Among Women In Similar Crisis Situations: Case Studies, Stephanie J. Butler

Masters Theses

Using volunteers who were single mothers of young children who were products of unplanned pregnancies in a non-marital situation, six interviews were conducted and disclosure and narrative communication patterns were observed. Each interview was videotaped and observations and comparisons were made about the subjects interviewed. Common themes identified included an overall willingness to discuss the father of the child, a correlation between the relationship with the father and the feelings felt toward the father, worries about money, the importance of talking to other people, a feeling that mother and child were a "package deal" in that if a man they …

Affinity-Seeking In The Classroom: A Study Of Differences In Instructor Gender And Status, Darin L. Garard

Masters Theses

Affinity-seeking is the process by which individuals attempt to get others to like them. The purpose of the present study was to analyze student perceptions of instructor use of affinity-seeking strategies as a function of instructor gender and status by replicating the research of Bell and Daly (1984) and Roach (1992). A pilot study was first conducted to determine if research in this area was indeed warranted; results were significantly positive to that effect. For the present study, research questions were developed to examine the differences between male and female instructor affinity-seeking, Graduate Teaching Assistant and faculty affinity-seeking, and to …

Good Grief! Coping With Death And Dying In A Hospice Situation, Pegg Warnick

Masters Theses

The purpose of this qualitative study is to discover and examine the coping strategies concerning death and dying from the perspectives of hospice patients and hospice volunteers. A review of applicable literature, informal but structured interviews and participant observation are procedures for the study. The focus of the study lies in three areas: what are the internal attributes used to cope?; what are the external support systems used to cope? and, what are the adjustments in personal goals? Research for this study was patterned after Hegge's study (1991) who surveyed the coping strategies of the recently widowed elderly. The instruments …

Mbti Personality Types And Preferred Relationship Disengagement Strategies In Intimate Situations, Jeffery Joe Davis

Masters Theses

This thesis poses two research questions that focus on MBTI personality types and specific strategies used to disengage romantic intimate heterosexual relationships. 1) Would one specific MBTI personality type prefer to use one dominate strategy to disengage a relationship? 2) Would any relationship situation yield one dominate strategy to disengage a relationship? A total of 116 college students were surveyed at a small Midwestern university. Age ranged from 18 years to 55 years with a mean age of 23.6 years. The experimental method consisted of administering Form G of the MBTI and an additional questionnaire measuring relationship strategies. The t-test …

Interpersonal Skills In The Employment Interview: Intended Meaning, Sharron Mccarthy Meisenhelder

Masters Theses

Recently employers have been including references to communication skills in their advertising for employment opportunities. This research examined what people in business and industry mean when they use the phrase "interpersonal skills." A questionnaire was developed and administered to 60 people associated with personnel practices in business and industry. Content analysis of questionnaire responses found the subjects to identify the interpersonally skilled employee to be "effective," to be "sensitive" and to have a "positive attitude."

Opening Lines In Classroom And Social Settings: A Study Of The Initiator's First Conversational Sequence, Julie E. Hutcheson

Masters Theses

This study examined various types of opening lines that college students use with strangers in classrooms and social settings. An opening line was defined as the initial turn of the conversational sequence. The responses received by the students, through an open-ended survey, were analyzed and categorized using content analysis. The results revealed many similarities among the two settings in eight pre-established categories and three new categories except for in one of the newest categories. The social setting in one of the newest categories received more sarcastic conversational sequences than the classroom. This study provides examples pertaining to many opening lines …

Communication And Aging: Perceptions Of Family And Friend Interaction On Self Reported Life Satisfaction Among Selected Residents Of Three Nursing Homes, Patricia J. Fetzner

Masters Theses

The study of communication and aging provides great potential for enriching the lives of the elderly. Of course this should be of great interest to each of us as we are all inevitably aging. One rapidly growing area in communication research deals with how communication affects the life satisfaction of the elderly. Of particular interest is the attitudinal effect of family and friend interaction.

Early research dealing with the elderly focused on two theories: 1. Activity theory, which is the idea that social activity is essential to an older person's sense of well being and; 2. Disengagement theory, which suggests …

Similarity/Dissimilarity Of Couples Communication Competence In Relationship To Their Marital Satisfaction, Thomas Kenne Worthen

Masters Theses

Research has shown that similar communicator styles leads to effective communication, and effective communication leads to relationship satisfaction. Using an extension of balance theory, this study analyzed the relationship between spouses similar/dissimilar communication competence ratings and their marital satisfaction.

Subjects consisted of 44 married couples from a midwestern university and the surrounding area. The Communication Adaptability Scale was used to measure communication competence. The Marital Adjustment Test was used to measure marital satisfaction. Using a t-test no significance was found.

The overall competence score of each spouse was broken down into six separate factors (appropriate disclosure, articulation, social experience, social …

Sex Differences, Intimacy, And Attractiveness In Reported Self-Disclosure: Same-Sex Dyads Vs Opposite-Sex Dyads, Edmund Forst Jr.

Masters Theses

This study empirically examined the effects of sex (gender), intimacy, and attractiveness on reported self-disclosure. The results were supportive of the attractiveness, intimacy, and gender of the self-disclosee variables in their relationship to self-disclosure. Results failed to support hypotheses involving the gender of the self-discloser variable.

The independent variables used in the study were: (1) Gender¹ of the self-discloser (male-female), (2) Intimacy (intimate friend, acquaintance, and stranger), (3) Gender² of the self-disclosee (male-female), and physical attractiveness (Attractive or Unattractive). The dependent variable used was the amount of perceived self-disclosure. A 2x3x2x2 analysis of variance used to test each …

Interpersonal Communication As A Function Of Subject Representational Mode, Joseph Adrian Williams

Masters Theses

The study investigated aspects of a communications model of psychotherapy advanced by Grinder and Bandler. Subjects were thirty male and female undergraduate introductory psychology students at Eastern Illinois University during the summer of 1977. The subjects ranked a set of tape recorded statements for "understandability". These statements were presented in visual, auditory, and kinesthetic representational modes. Subject ratings provided a measure of which representational modes communicated most effectively to them. Three independent judges rated transcripts of recorded samples of the subject's actual language usage to determine the representational modes utilized by the subjects. Analysis of the ratings resulted in a …

Effects Of Distance And Sex On Verbal Productivity And Anxiety, Peter Lindsay Rogers

Masters Theses

The present study was designed to determine whether physical distance between male and female interviewees and a female interviewer affected verbal productivity and anxiety level when interviewees discussed academic, social, and personal topics. The interview was conceptualized as an information-gathering interview. Crucial variables in such interviews are client participation and information flow. Client verbal productivity appears to be directly related to these variables, and was used as one dependent variable to measure the impact of distance on interviewee verbal behavior. A self-report measure of anxiety, the Fear Thermometer was used as a second dependent variable.

The experimental distances used in …

The Effects Of Self-Concept Instruction As Part Of The Basic Speech Course, Gayle Lynn Davenport

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

The Body Language Of Self-Disclosure, Duane Connett

Masters Theses

A study was conducted to investigate the relationship of the Jourard Self-disclosure Inventory (JSDI) to 1) nonverbal behavior and 2) actual disclosure (validation of the JSDI) as measured by the number of words and speaking time. Latency was also involved. From 120 students completing the inventory 30 students scoring in the upper 30% (high-disclosers) and 30 from the lower 30% (low-disclosers) were chosen to participate in an interview. The interview consisted of 30 topics of varying intimacy about which Ss disclosed. The high-discloser group and low-discloser group were compared by a rating scale for “open” behaviors “closed” behaviors during the …

A Communication Channel: Its Existence And Its Use, Michael Lee Klipp

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

A Study Into The Effects Of Knowledge Of Peer Group Evaluation Upon Self-Concept Change, Janice Marie Beyer

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Leader Presence And Moderate Stress Upon Small Group Sentiment And Interaction, Ray Lewis Cordon

Masters Theses

The purpose of this investigation was to determine the effects of leader presence and moderate stress upon sentiment and interaction in small groups. Seventy-four students were selected from the required speech course at Eastern Illinois University to serve as subjects. These subjects were assigned to sixteen groups, ranging from four to five members per group.

Silent and absent leadership, imposed stress and no stress were introduced to the groups through a 2 X 2 factorial design. In one condition (N = 18) the group leader provided instructions and then remained silent during group interaction, and moderate stress--an announced time barrier--was …

A Field Study Of Adaptation Of Conventional Persuasive Techniques By Life Insurance Agents, Richard L. Shoen

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

The Scientific Interests Of Robert Wilson Gibbes As Revealed In The Gibbes-Morton Correspondence, Phillip S. Swartz

Masters Theses

No abstract provided by author.