Eileen Berlin Ray

Social Support, Home/Work Stress, and Burnout: Who can Help?:

This study considered the nature of home/work stress and investigated the role of social support from both intra- and extraorganizational sources in reducing that stress and buffering its impact on burnout. Specifically, demographic factors affecting perceptions of home/work stress and the impact of various sources of social support were examined. Data were collected from nursing-home nurses and analyzed using regression techniques. Results suggested that participants with children and those cohabiting with their partners were particularly vulnerable to home/work stress. Results also indicated that different sources of social support worked in unique ways to relieve the strain of home/work stress. Implications of this research for theory on social support are considered, along with the pragmatic suggestions for using study results in dealing with home/work stress.

The Influence of Communication Structure and Social Support on Job Stress and Burnout

This study examined the relationship among structural communicative variables and perceptions of social support, stress, and burnout in a sample of elementary school teachers. Specifically, it was hypothesized that participation in decision making, network link strength, and link multiplexity would influence perceptions of supervisory (principal) and co-worker support. These perceptions, and workload, then influence burnout and job satisfaction. The results provide support for a model that (a) suggests a differentiation between relational depth and relational breadth in predicting perceived support, (b) highlights the importance of supportive communication in reducing role ambiguity, and (c) suggests that burnout has distinctive affective and exhaustion dimensions that should be considered in future research.

The Relationship among Communication Network Roles, Job Stress, and Burnout in Educational Organizations.

This study examined the relationship among communication network roles, job stress, and burnout. Network roles were determined by frequent, multiplex, and reciprocal communication linkages. Based on their location in the informal network, subjects were assigned the communication role of isolate, dyad member, group member, or linker. Isolates reported significantly less stress and burnout than dyad members, group members, or linkers. Dyad members reported significantly less stress than group members and less burnout than linkers. Group members reported significantly less burnout than linkers. These findings, and their implications for understanding the communication‐job stress‐burnout process, are discussed.

Speaking of incest: The research interview as social justice

Abstract This study examines the process of speaking in a research interview and how it might function as social justice. Specifically, we investigate if and how the research interview process can be transformative for adult incest survivors. Using analytic induction, we analyzed respondents’ reactions to face‐to‐face research interviews and identified three themes. The first theme, knowledge of self, includes what interviewees learned about themselves through the research interview process. The second theme, interpersonal relationships between the interviewer and interviewees, emphasizes the importance of the relationship established in the interview. The third theme, desire to create change, highlights interviewees’ expressions of hope that their participation in the research interview might affect change at a broader societal level. Theoretic and pragmatic implications of these findings are discussed.

Translating scholarship on intrafamilial sexual abuse: The utility of a dialectical perspective for adult survivors

Abstract The impact of childhood sexual abuse is widespread, affecting the victim, family, friends, and society. While the prevalence of childhood sexual abuse has become part of the public consciousness in recent years, the public remains less aware that a large number of these abusive acts are perpetrated within familial relationships. Adult incest survivors face a past often shrouded in secrecy and must find a way to make sense of their experience in the present. This article presents an argument for the utility of a dialectical framework for helping adult incest survivors understand intrafamilial sexual abuse. The dialectical approach to communication in personal relationships consists of four assumptions: contradiction, dialectical change, praxis, and totality (Baxter & Montgomery, 1996). In this essay these assumptions are explicated and the accounts of adult incest survivors are used to illustrate and support the utility of the dialectical framework for understanding the communication dynamics whic...

The relationship of perceived physician communicator style to patient satisfaction

Using Nortons (1978, 1983) communicator style construct, this study examined how patients’ perceptions of their physicians communicator style was related to patient satisfaction. Eight communicator styles and six dimensions of patient satisfaction were identified. The results revealed that most of the significant relationships were nonlinear and that different styles were related to different types of satisfaction. Theoretic and pragmatic implications, as well as avenues for future research, are discussed.

Speech behavior and social evaluation: An examination of medical messages

Three levels of speech rate and pitch variation were used in audio‐taped presentations of two medical messages varying in seriousness of illness (high and low). The messages were uttered in natural speech samples which listeners judged according to their perceptions of rate and pitch as well as personality traits. A personality structure emerged which included dynamism, social attractiveness, and professional competence. Rate had its largest effects on dynamism while pitch variation had a greater influence on social attractiveness and professional competence. Seriousness of illness was primarily involved in interaction effects, the most important of which involved interaction between seriousness of illness and rate. High rate was perceived as less professionally competent in the high serious illness condition than the low serious condition, while medium rate yielded the highest ratings of professional competence for the high serious illness. The results are discussed in the framework provided by the dimen...

Professional ideology and physicians’ perceived disclosure patterns toward cancer patients

This study examined differences in physicians’ perceptions of their disclosure patterns toward cancer patients based on their professional ideological orientation. Adapting Strauss et al.’s (1964) ...

The case study in health communication research

METHOD MATTERS Teresa L. Thompson, Louis P. Cusella, Brian G. Southwell EXPLORATON AND DESCRIPTION Interview/Focus Group Erin E. Donovan, Laura E. Miller, Daena J. Goldsmith Case Study Leigh Arden Ford, Mindi Ann Golden, Eileen Berlin Ray Ethnography Laura E. Ellingson, William K. Rawlins Surveys Susan E. Morgan, Nicholas L. Carcioppolo EXAMINING MESSAGES AND INTERPERSONAL EXCHANGES Narrative Analysis Jill Yamasaki, Barbara F. Sharf, Lynn M. Harter Conversation Analysis Christopher J. Koenig, Jeffrey D. Robinson Analyzing Physician-Patient Interactions Robert A. Bell, Richard L. Kravitz Social Network Analysis Rachel A. Smith Content Analysis Yan Tian, James D. Robinson CAUSAL EXPLICATION Experimental Christopher R. Morse, Bryant University, Brian L. Quick, Julie E. Volkman, Edith Nourse, Bryan B. Whaley Meta-Analysis Seth M. Noar, Leslie B. Snyde Meta-Synthesis Anne M. Stone, Aaron T. Seaman CULTURAL, POPULATION, AND CRITICAL CONCERNS Rhetorical Methods and Criticism Ashli Quesinberry Stokes Methodological Issues: Stigmatized Populations Kathryn L. Greene, Magsamen-Conrad Methodological Issues: Health Disparities Lisa Sparks, Michelle Miller-Day METHOD REFLECTIONS Joan A. Jurich, Austin S. Babrow, Lindsey M. Rose, Spencer D. Patterson