Communication apprehension and the type‐a personality

Do Type‐A individuals experience communication apprehension? Consistent with theoretical expectations, the data at hand suggest the answer is a qualified “no.” Individuals evidencing a Type‐A personality reported significantly less CA than their Type‐B counterparts. This pattern of findings was strongest for apprehension about communicating in “collective” contexts (e.g., public, group, meeting) but diminished for CA in more “intimate” circumstances (e.g., interpersonal).     

A Meta-Analytical Review of Selective Exposure to and the Enjoyment of Media Violence

A primary argument for the widespread production of media violence is that audiences want to watch violent content. This assumption is examined in this meta-analytic review of existing research on both selective exposure to and enjoyment of violence. The results show that violence has a significant effect on both selective exposure and enjoyment, but in different directions. Specifically, violence increases selective exposure but decreases enjoyment of content. Potential explanations for these effects and moderators that could influence the results (e.g., sex, aggressive personality traits, type of content) are considered, and the practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Portrayals of Women in Transnational Arab Television Drama Series

This content analysis of 15 Arabic and 3 Turkish drama serials on transnational Arab television examined the gender portrayals of characters. The analysis of 743 characters found that women were underrepresented, less likely to have recognizable jobs, and more likely than men to be portrayed in sex-typed occupations, activities, and settings. The analysis also revealed that programs with female writers were significantly less gender stereotypical. Moreover, differences were found among the producing Arab countries in terms of the portrayals of women; conservative countries had more sex-typed portrayals than the more liberal Arab countries, whereas Turkish programs had similar portrayals to Arabic programs produced in the liberal Arab states. The general findings are discussed in comparison to U.S. programming, and in relation to selective exposure, identification with characters, and potential effects on Arab viewers' gender role beliefs.     

The role of shoe design on the prediction of free torque at the shoe–surface interface using pressure insole technology

The goal of the current study was to expand on previous work to validate the use of pressure insole technology in conjunction with linear regression models to predict the free torque at the shoe–surface interface that is generated while wearing different athletic shoes. Three distinctly different shoe designs were utilised. The stiffness of each shoe was determined with a material’s testing machine. Six participants wore each shoe that was fitted with an insole pressure measurement device and performed rotation trials on an embedded force plate. A pressure sensor mask was constructed from those sensors having a high linear correlation with free torque values. Linear regression models were developed to predict free torques from these pressure sensor data. The models were able to accurately predict their own free torque well (RMS error 3.72 ± 0.74 Nm), but not that of the other shoes (RMS error 10.43 ± 3.79 Nm). Models performing self-prediction were also able to measure differences in shoe stiffness. The results of the current study showed the need for participant–shoe specific linear regression models to insure high prediction accuracy of free torques from pressure sensor data during isolated internal and external rotations of the body with respect to a planted foot.     

Against methodocentrism in educational research

Abstract

This essay defines and critiques ‘methodocentrism’, the belief that predetermined research methods are the determining factor in the validity and importance of educational research. By examining research in science studies and posthumanism, the authors explain how this methodocentrism disenables research from taking account of problems and non-human actants that are presumed to be of no importance or value in existing social science research methodologies, both qualitative and quantitative. Building from a critique of these methods as profoundly anthropocentric, the authors examine three crucial problematics in which methodocentrism functions in educational research: the institutionalization of graduate training, a wide-spread privileging of the visual (part and parcel of empiricism), and the seeming necessity of ‘data’ in social scientific research methodologies. Ultimately, this article does not reject the necessity of particular studies having methods—rigorous, philosophically grounded approaches to problems in the world—but it argues that the belief that methods must be selected from existing options and assembled before approaching the ‘objects’ of study is not only a form of bad science, it is also deeply implicated in anthropocentric and colonialist politics. Instead, what research requires today is a thorough rethinking of the very distinction between subject and object and a renewed questioning of how agency functions in specific research settings.