Self‐report scales of communication apprehension and autonomic arousal (heart rate): A test of construct validity

Previous research has typically relied upon self‐report scales of communication apprehension without assessing construct validity. This study attempts to assess the construct validity of selected scales and the constructs “communication anxiety” and “communication fear.” The results indicate higher levels of physiological arousal increase for females. Only scales purporting to measure communication fear were able to predict an a priori product of communication apprehension autonomic arousal.     

Evaluation of the speech dialect attitudinal scale

Listener groups employed the Speech Dialect Attitudinal Scale (SDAS) to rate speakers in a variety of situations. These involved: (A) foreign accent, (B) regional dialect, (C) speech pathology, (D) broadcast news reporting, and (E) use of obscene language. Reliability of ratings was consistently high, with a median of .98. Evidence of construct validity was provided by the factor structures of SDAS item scores. Except in the case of the speech pathology experiment, the factor analyses yielded a remarkably consistent three‐factor structure: Socio‐Intellectual Status, Aesthetic Quality, and Dynamism. In each case, analyses of variance and covariance of SDAS scores discriminated among speakers differentiated by linguistic variation, further supporting the validity of SDAS data.     

Poor Richard's alphabet and his pronunciation

The construct of unwillingness to communicate represents a global predisposition to avoid communication, whether due to apprehension, alienation, low self‐esteem, introversion, or other causes. The lines of research supporting the existence of the construct are discussed. The program of research leading to the present form of the Unwillingness‐to‐Communicate Scale is reported, including results of two studies that have provided reliability and validity data. Based on factor analysis results, a 20‐item instrument with two factors, reward and approach‐avoidance, is recommended for research use.     

Extending Humor Enactment Research

Humor orientation (HO) is an individual difference variable that influences production and delivery of humorous communication. Prior research indicates that people who score higher on HO enact humor more frequently and effectively, which in turn leads to more benefits and advantages in a variety of social and psychological outcomes. Research reported here extends this line of analysis with HO for its relationship to a broad gauge measure of benefit, satisfaction with life, extending HO into understudied domains. This study compared Bulgarian adults (n = 100) to several American samples. Primary findings were that Bulgarians were similar to American samples overall but scored consistently higher than Americans on satisfaction with life (SWL). HO and SWL are correlated (r = .27), a medium effect size.     

Understanding the Role of Instructor Rapport in the College Classroom

ABSTRACT

This study examined the discriminant validity between rapport and immediacy and tested a model using instructor rapport as the mediator between immediacy and learning. Participants (N = 146) completed measures of nonverbal immediacy, instructor rapport, perceived cognitive learning, and anticipated final course grade. Results revealed that immediacy and rapport were two distinct constructs. In testing the model, the enjoyable interaction dimension of instructor rapport mediated the relationship between immediacy and perceived learning but not anticipated final grades. The personal connection dimension of rapport mediated the relationship between immediacy and both perceived learning and anticipated final grade. These results explore the mechanism through which immediacy may lead to cognitive learning.     

Problem‐solving performance in naturalistic groups: A test of the ecological validity of the functional perspective

Critics argue that the use of zero‐history laboratory samples to study the processes of small‐group communication lacks ecological validity and limits our ability to determine the usefulness of small group communication theories for the everyday practitioner. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the functional perspective of small‐group communication has real‐world significance by testing its predictive ability in naturalistic problem‐solving groups in an organizational setting. Statistical analyses provided partial support for the relationship between functional requisites and problem‐solving performance in an applied setting. Specifically, analysis of the problem, orientation/establishment of operating procedures, and evaluation of the positive consequences of alternatives were each found to have an independent main effect on the level of decision utility.     

An instructor self‐disclosure scale

This ‐paper introduces the Instructor Self‐Disclosure Scale and reports on two initial studies that address the reliability and validity of the scale. The Instructor Self‐Disclosure Scale is an 18‐item measure of the amount of instructor self‐disclosure. In Study One, instructor self‐disclosure was positively related to the student motives of relational, excuse‐making, and sycophancy. In Study Two, instructor self‐disclosure was positively related to out‐of‐class communication, the student interest dimensions of meaningfulness and impact, and cognitive learning. Additionally, the Instructor Self‐Disclosure Scale appears to be a unidimensional, internally reliable measure.     

Argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness: Testing for conceptual and measurement equivalence across cultures

Research in the United States has identified argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness as, respectively, constructive and counterproductive forms of communication predispositions. The present study tests the conceptual equivalence of the two constructs and the measurement equivalence of the Argumentativeness Scale (Infante & Rancer, 1982) and the Verbal Aggressiveness Scale (Infante & Wigley, 1986) across cultures. College students from the United States (N = 755) and Japan (N = 716) responded to a questionnaire. The results indicated that: (a) the two—factor solution of the Argumentativeness Scale and the Verbal Aggressiveness Scale was a reasonable overall fit to both samples, with some culture‐specific unreliable items; (b) orthogonality of the two constructs held for both samples; (c) the factor structures (factor loading patterns and factor variance‐covariance structures) of the two scales were partially variant across the samples; and (d) the two scales had satisfactory construct validity for the Japanese sample. Implications for research on aggressive communication in connection with Hall's (1981) theory of cultural variation, cross‐cultural conflict management, and measurement in cross‐cultural communication research are discussed.     

Contamination and Camouflage in Euphemisms

The study reports a factor analytic investigation of the interpersonal attraction construct. Two‐hundred and fifteen subjects completed 30 Likert‐type, seven‐step scales concerning an acquaintance. Factor analysis indicated three dimensions of the interpersonal attraction construct which were labeled “task” “social” and “physical.” The results of this study and four replications suggest that the resulting 15‐item instrument can be expected to measure reliably three dimensions of interpersonal attraction.     

Newer is not necessarily better a reexamination of affective learning measurement

The instrument commonly employed in instructional communication to measure affective learning was subjected to tests of its construct validity as a measure of higher‐order affective learning. The results indicate the instrument is a satisfactory instrument for this purpose. Newer measures of higher‐order affective learning were found to be highly associated with the older measure. Teacher evaluation measures were found to be distinct from both the newer and the older affective learning measures. The construct validity of the commonly used affective learning instrument is good.     

An uninformed electorate: identity-motivated elaboration,partisan cues,and learning

ABSTRACT

A deliberative democracy is reliant on an informed electorate discussing issues and presenting persuasive arguments. Individuals acquire information from exposure to political messages. Partisan cues, however, undermine learning outcomes. The current study experimentally examines the social cognitive processes that underlie this learning process. Integrating the social identity theory, elaboration likelihood model, and the theory of motivated reasoning to construct the theoretical concept of identity-motivated elaboration, the results indicate that partisan social identities motivate biased processing of new information, which subsequently influences the valence of elaboration. Positively and negatively valenced elaboration are situated as mediating variables in the structural model, which predicts learning from a persuasive political message. The current study extends the partisan social identity hypothesis to the elaborative and learning outcomes of political messages.     

Social perception and message awareness as correlates of person‐centered regulative messages

This study reports the extent to which four social and message perception abilities predict the use of person‐centered messages in regulative influence situations: construct differentiation, number of prosocial influence goals, awareness of message effects, and positive outcome predictions. Undergraduate students completed several message tasks along with the Role Category Questionnaire to measure interpersonal cognitive complexity. Construct differentiation and the message analysis variables accounted for 45% of the variance in person‐centered regulative messages. Each of the message knowledge and goal variables was a significant predictor of person‐centered regulative messages. Person‐centered regulative messages were more likely to be produced by people with highly differentiated construct systems, people who had prosocial influence goals, and people who had knowledge of and confidence about the effects their messages would have on their message recipients.     

Humor ability,unwillingness to communicate,loneliness, and perceived stress: Testing a security theory

The purpose of this study was to develop and test a theory of the laughter‐humor link in interpersonal communication. The basic premise of the theory is that a sense of security underlies the ability to encode humor in everyday conversation. It was hypothesized that communication‐related security (i.e., willingness to communicate) predicts humor ability, which in turn negatively predicts loneliness and perceived stress. Undergraduates completed a survey including the following scales: Unwillingness‐ to‐Communicate, Humor Orientation, Coping Humor, revised UCLA Loneliness, and Perceived Stress. Regression analyses confirm that willingness to communicate predicted humor orientation, while humor orientation mediated the relationship between willingness to communicate and coping humor. Humor orientation negatively predicted loneliness and perceived stress, although in both cases willingness to communicate mediated the relationships. The discussion highlights methodological limitations (e.g., use of self‐report) and reiterates the need for interaction‐ and context‐based studies of the laughter‐humor relationship.     

An experimental study of certain physiological,introspective and rating‐scale techniques for the measurement of stage fright

After a review of the research on compliance‐gaining strategies, it was decided that deductive approaches toward the development of a taxonomy of compliance‐gaining strategies are limited because of epistemological and methodological problems. Instead of a deductive approach, the paper proposes that an inductively‐derived taxonomy is a more valid and reliable classification scheme of compliance‐gaining strategies. The paper therefore attempts to ascertain the representational validity of a particular inductively‐derived taxonomy of compliance‐gaining strategies. The assessment of the representational validity was accomplished by comparing proposed properties of the taxonomy with a multidimensional scaling representation of subjects’ perceptions of persuasive messages. The comparison indicated that the taxonomy had a high degree of representational validity. Finally, it was suggested that future research should focus on the dynamics of the properties of compliance‐gaining strategies.     

Ego‐involvement,self‐monitoring,and conformity in small groups: A communicative analysis

This investigation compared social judgment theory and the construct self‐monitoring as explanations of conformity behavior in small groups. Highly ego‐involved discussants communicated with greater emotionality and dominance and with less reasonableness than their low ego‐involved counterparts; but, the impact of ego‐involvement was partially mediated by self‐monitoring.     

Vowel quality before and after an operation for an occluded nasal passage

Anxiety experienced while in a public speaking situation (speech anxiety) is discussed within the framework of Trait‐State Anxiety Theory. Speech anxiety may be considered a dispositional variable designed to measure individual differences in speech anxiety proneness (Speech A‐Trait) or a measure of anxiety experienced during a particular speech (Speech A‐State). Physiological and behavioral measures of speech anxiety are typically viewed as A‐State measures. Self‐report indices may be considered either state or trait anxiety measures depending on the context in which the measures were obtained. The development of a scale to measure both Speech A‐State and Speech A‐Trait, including initial normative, reliability, and validity data, is reported.     

Using mass media in the presidential primaries: Effects on candidate issue knowledge and confidence in judging candidate viability

The role of mass media in the presidential primaries has not been examined in the same fashion as in the presidential general elections, congressional elections, and gubernatorial elections. This study is based on a survey (face‐to‐face interviews) of 392 adults randomly selected from a city with a population of 444,000 during the 1996 presidential primaries. The results of the hierarchical multiple regression analyses show that television news programs increase learning about candidate issue policies. People's confidence in judging which candidate has a better chance to win the party's nomination is influenced by reading of newspaper campaign stories, viewing of the campaign commercials, and their attention to the campaign news on TV. This study enriches our understanding of media effects in the presidential primaries.     

Understanding Emotion from a Superordinate Dimensional Perspective: A Productive Way Forward for Communication Processes and Effects Studies

Subjects differing in interpersonal construct differentiation completed both an attitude measure and a behavioral intentions measure (in which subjects’ behavioral intentions in each of nine attitude‐relevant interpersonal situations were assessed) toward a subject‐selected target person. While the overall correlation between attitude and the behavioral intentions index was high (r = .85,), low‐differentiation subjects displayed significantly greater attitude‐behavioral intentions consistency (r = .95,) than did high‐differentiation subjects (r = .75). Correspondingly low differentiation subjects exhibited significantly less variability in the evaluative direction of their behavioral intentions than did high‐differentiation subjects (construct differentiation and variance in individuals’ behavioral intentions were correlated, r = .37). The results are interpreted as suggesting that within a given domain, persons with developmentally less advanced cognitive systems place greater reliance on evaluative consistency principles in organizing their beliefs and behaviors and hence are more likely to exhibit attitude‐behavior consistency than are persons with more developed systems.     

Effect of speed of presentation on recall of television messages

The study investigated the effect of two techniques for reinforcing the message in television news stories: visual‐verbal redundancy and verbal recapitulations. Impact of the techniques on learning was examined with a 2 × 2 factorial design experiment (N = 80), using a five story newscast. It was hypothesized that recapping would have a beneficial effect on understanding, based on its highlighting function, while a redundancy effect on recall was expected for visuals that reinforced words. As expected, high visual‐verbal redundancy produced greater viewer recall than did low redundancy. The addition of summary oral recaps improved understanding.     

More than Bags of Words: Sentiment Analysis with Word Embeddings

ABSTRACT

Moving beyond the dominant bag-of-words approach to sentiment analysis we introduce an alternative procedure based on distributed word embeddings. The strength of word embeddings is the ability to capture similarities in word meaning. We use word embeddings as part of a supervised machine learning procedure which estimates levels of negativity in parliamentary speeches. The procedure’s accuracy is evaluated with crowdcoded training sentences; its external validity through a study of patterns of negativity in Austrian parliamentary speeches. The results show the potential of the word embeddings approach for sentiment analysis in the social sciences.