Argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness as a function of locus of control

This study examined argumentativeness, verbal aggressiveness, and general control expectancies. Two hundred ten (N=210) participants completed the Argumentativeness Scale, the Verbal Aggressiveness Scale, and a modified version of the Three‐Factor Locus of Control Scale. Results indicate that individuals who reportan internal control orientation were found toreport lower levels of argument avoidance than externals. Externals reported higher levels of verbal aggressiveness than internals. Further, an external locus of control orientation was positively related to verbal aggressiveness. Internal locus of control orientation was negatively related to tendency to avoid arguments. The findings provide further evidence into the relationship between control expectancies and aggressive communication traits.     

Testing Hierarchical Models of Argumentativeness and Verbal Aggressiveness

Support was found for a hierarchical model of argumentativeness theory (N = 1541) in which the second-order factors of motivation to argue and verbal aggressiveness exert top-down influence on subsidiary motives and attitudes. Emotional involvement with arguing and emotional involvement with verbal aggressing were added to clarify the originating theory and to improve model fit. The argumentativeness scale was heterogeneous, consisting of distinct ability and motivation to argue factors. Ability to argue had a direct negative effect and an indirect positive effect on verbal aggressiveness, with this positive effect mediated by motivation to argue. The positive effect of motivation to argue on verbal aggressiveness was moderated by college education, suggesting that students acquire a debate schema during their first semesters of college that enables them to better control their arguments, preventing escalation into verbal aggression. The methodological and theoretical implications of the results are discussed.     

The relationships of trait verbal aggressiveness and frequency of viewing and enjoyment of television sitcoms

Verbal aggressiveness is the tendency to attack the self‐concept of another person with the intent to inflict psychological pain (Infante & Wigley, 1986). This study focused on how low and high verbally aggressives differ in the television sitcoms they watch and how enjoyable they find those shows. Participants (N = 555) first completed the Verbal Aggressiveness Scale. Then they were asked how often they watch particular television sitcoms and if they watched a given sitcom, how entertaining they found that show to be. The sitcoms included in this study were those that were televised in April 1996. Of the 33 shows included in the analyses, low verbal aggressives differed from high verbal aggressives on 8 shows for frequency of watching and on 11 shows for entertainment value.     

Testing the fairness of citation indicators for comparison across scientific domains: The case of fractional citation counts

Citation numbers are extensively used for assessing the quality of scientific research. The use of raw citation counts is generally misleading, especially when applied to cross-disciplinary comparisons, since the average number of citations received is strongly dependent on the scientific discipline of reference of the paper. Measuring and eliminating biases in citation patterns is crucial for a fair use of citation numbers. Several numerical indicators have been introduced with this aim, but so far a specific statistical test for estimating the fairness of these numerical indicators has not been developed. Here we present a statistical method aimed at estimating the effectiveness of numerical indicators in the suppression of citation biases. The method is simple to implement and can be easily generalized to various scenarios. As a practical example we test, in a controlled case, the fairness of fractional citation count, which has been recently proposed as a tool for cross-discipline comparison. We show that this indicator is not able to remove biases in citation patterns and performs much worse than the rescaling of citation counts with average values.     

Emotions as motivators for information seeking: A conceptual analysis

This conceptual analysis of how emotions and feelings are characterized as motivators for information seeking draws on the appraisal theories suggesting that emotions motivate individuals by triggering action readiness to approach or avoid sources of information. The findings indicate that emotions and feelings motivate in five major ways: they start, expand, limit, or terminate the information-seeking process, or they lead to information avoidance. Information scientists have mainly characterized the motivational aspects of negatively colored emotions such as anxiety and fear while the role of positive emotions such as joy has remained secondary.     

Examining the measurement and structural invariance of LibQUAL+® across user groups

The LibQUAL+® instrument measures users' perceptions of library service quality; three factors are evaluated: Affect of Service, Information Control, and Library as Place. Although previous studies have assessed the factorial invariance of LibQUAL+®, factorial invariance by itself is insufficient for score comparability across groups. Stronger levels of measurement invariance need to be established. This study systematically tested the measurement and structural invariance of LibQUAL+® scores in a sample of 1551 undergraduate students, 707 graduate students, and 134 faculty members. Multi-group confirmatory factor analyses showed that full measurement invariance did hold between students and faculty for the complete instrument. Building on the measurement invariance, structural invariance models showed that factor variances were equivalent across user groups, but factor covariances and means differed. Faculty had higher perceptions of Affect of Service and undergraduate students had higher perceptions of Library as Place compared to the other groups.     

A conceptual model for the development of broadband and e-government

The paper discusses the interconnection of the adoption and diffusion of broadband (‘BB’), e-government (‘EG’) and e-commerce (‘EC’) services. It provides a structured literature review and proposes a conceptual framework for studying the interconnection of the development and adoption of BB, EG and EC. The interconnections of various concepts are shown along with several hypotheses that are thoroughly theoretically grounded. The role of different technology acceptance models is discussed, while the importance of including various aspects in policy preparation analyses is emphasized.     

Protean places: teams across time and space

Proteanism is about the simultaneous disruption of place and the seeking of a new sense of place. These metaphorical concepts of the fluid yet grounded, the shape shifting and consolidation, and the evolving creation of a sense of place are applied to a discussion of changing organizational forms and communicative processes. These new formings within ever-changing forms are referred to as Protean Places. The protean concepts of sequentiality, simultaneity, and sociality are examined within the context of what we know about changing organizational forms, major communicative processes, and the history of a virtual customer service team organized across time and space. Finally, the metaphor of Protean Places and the case study are utilized to provide direction for future research, theory building, and practical application in organizational communication.     

The relationship between parental traits and open family communication: Affective orientation and verbal aggression

This study examined haw the parental traits of affective orientation and verbal aggressiveness were associated with openness in family communication patterns. Responses were obtained from 133 college‐aged children and their parents.

Parental affective orientation was positively related to their children's perceptions of more open family communication patterns, while verbal aggressiveness was negatively related. Parents’ and children's levels of trait affective orientation were moderately correlated (r=.45) with children's AO levels being higher than their parents’.     

A new unsupervised method for document clustering by using WordNet lexical and conceptual relations

Text document clustering provides an effective and intuitive navigation mechanism to organize a large amount of retrieval results by grouping documents in a small number of meaningful classes. Many well-known methods of text clustering make use of a long list of words as vector space which is often unsatisfactory for a couple of reasons: first, it keeps the dimensionality of the data very high, and second, it ignores important relationships between terms like synonyms or antonyms. Our unsupervised method solves both problems by using ANNIE and WordNet lexical categories and WordNet ontology in order to create a well structured document vector space whose low dimensionality allows common clustering algorithms to perform well. For the clustering step we have chosen the bisecting k-means and the Multipole tree, a modified version of the Antipole tree data structure for, respectively, their accuracy and speed.

Problems of information support of scientific innovation and industrial spheres: New conceptual approaches

The discrepancy between national information infrastructure capabilities and the present-day requirements of the new economic institutional environment is one of main causes of the gap between the significant volume of fundamental and applied innovation research results that have commercialization potential, and the actual abilities of our domestic industry to assimilate these results, which exists in Russia. The purpose of this article is to form at least a rough conceptual look at an effective information infrastructure for innovation and scientific and technical activities, which corresponds to the present-day requirements of the new economic institutional environment in Russia. To solve the problem of overcoming inertial trends in national information system development, new ideas and new conceptual approaches are required. The presented conceptual approaches are oriented toward solving the problems of modernization and the development of a qualitatively new structural and substantial organization of the national information system. Most of the critical phases of information support of the stages of technology transfer and the basic principles of information infrastructure development are shown. A brief enumeration of the set of key actions on the development of the information infrastructure of the scientific, technical, and industrial spheres is provided.     

Advertising and the homogenization of cultures: Perspectives from ASEAN

Over the past few decades, ASEAN countries have been constructing coherent national identities by establishing national ideologies based on a unified set of cultural values. International advertising presents a challenge to these nation‐building projects because it tends to act as a global cultural homogenizing force. In efforts to temper the cultural impact of international advertising, ASEAN governments have responded by regulating the cultural content of advertising. This paper examines the cultural regulation of advertising in three ASEAN nations, Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam. These nations offer interesting contrasts; while they share a certain geographic proximity, they differ in language, culture, religion, economic systems, and political ideology, and each has unique methods for protecting local cultures through the regulation of advertising.     

Testing Equivalence in Communication Research: Theory and Application

Although equivalence testing is preferred when a researcher's goal is to support the null hypothesis (i.e., no substantial effect), equivalence tests are virtually unknown and unused in the communication field. This article provides the rationale for and theoretical background of equivalence testing and offers examples of equivalence tests for the independent and dependent groups t-test and tests of association using Pearson's coefficient or correlation. From a review of meta-analyses, we provide tables of commonly observed effect-sizes across subdisciplines and topic areas in communication and offer these as a guideline for choosing minimum substantial effects (Δ) in equivalence testing when no other information source is available. To facilitate the adoption of equivalence tests in future research, we provide easy-to-use custom dialogs for SPSS which greatly simplify their computation and application.     

Preface: Historical research on archives and knowledge cultures: an interdisciplinary wave

Introduces the collection of articles collected in the special issue "Knowledge Cultures.”     

Of cultures and compromises: Publishers,textbooks, and the academy

Relationships between professors as textbook authors and publishing houses as textbook producers have always been fragile. L. Kathy Heilenman examines this relationship and describes how current changes in the climate of universities and in the structure of publishing houses have converged to render this relationship more than usaually problematic. She concludes with suggestions for restructuring the relationship so as to encourage the production of high-quality, innovative textbooks in a partnership between publishers and professors. L. Kathy Heilenman teaches French at the University of Iowa and is one of the authors ofVoilà! a first-year college-level French textbook.     

Usability Testing for e-Resource Discovery: How Students Find and Choose e-Resources Using Library Web Sites

In early 2010, library staff at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) in Ohio designed and conducted a usability study of key parts of the library web site, focusing on the web pages generated by the library's electronic resources management system (ERM) that list and describe the library's databases. The goal was to discover how users find and choose e-resources and identify ways the library could improve access to e-resources through its web site. This article outlines the usability study conducted at BGSU, presents its conclusions about how students at BGSU find and choose databases, contextualizes these findings with other current research about user behavior, and makes recommendations for increasing student use of library e-resources.     

A conceptual framework for understanding the content of advertising: Its application to the specific case of Chinese television commercials

The conceptual framework for explaining advertising content formulated in this paper begins with environmental factors such as culture and economic system, and ends with the ads themselves—with advertising industry factors, such as practices and views/values of its actors, and consumer factors, such as experience making up the middle two layers. An empirical application of this model, through variables derived from it, to Chinese television commercials suggests post‐hoc substantiation for the most part. Future studies could pose and test a priori hypotheses (for other countries, media, and variables) leading to the refinement, clarification, and elaboration of the model.     

Making the bridge: Testing a library workshop for a summer bridge learning community

The John F. Kennedy Memorial Library at California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA), collaborated with the CSULA Student Support Program and the Educational Opportunity Program in an innovative attempt to increase visibility and use of library resources and services by at-risk students enrolled in the 2005 Summer Bridge Program. Workshops were held for tutors, study group leaders, and writing instructors associated with the Summer Bridge. Assessment of the program was conducted through a survey of workshop participants. Writing instructors and tutors were overwhelmingly positive in their response to the workshop, but study group leaders were more evenly divided in their assessment of the workshop's utility, which suggests that alumni of the Summer Bridge Program may benefit from additional instructional support services.