Jeffrey T. Child

The Impact of Communal Knowledge Repositories and People-Based Knowledge Management on Perceptions of Team Effectiveness

Managers have increasingly implemented knowledge databases and knowledge-sharing training to improve team effectiveness. The authors examine whether intranet-based repository use and perception of accurate team knowledge of who knows what were related to perceived team effectiveness. They found that the perception that ones team had accurate who-knows-what knowledge is positively related to perceived team effectiveness. Repository use is not positively related to perceived team effectiveness. Remote work and tenure are not significant moderators of these relationships. These findings imply that perception of an accurate cognitive map of who knows what is more important to perceived team effectiveness than accessing information from repositories, regardless of remote work status or organizational tenure.

Preparation Meeting Opportunity: How Do College Students Prepare for Public Speeches?

Nearly half a million students prepare classroom speeches each year, but little is known about overall preparation time and the relative proportions of time used for each speech preparation activity. Further, we do not know the specific speech preparation activities that result in higher speech grades. Public speaking students completed journal entries over the course of a semester detailing their speech preparation process. Multiple regression revealed the relationship of time spent in five writing activities and overall speech grade averages. Overall preparation time correlated significantly with higher speech grades; in addition, students who spent more time in delivery and practice earned higher speech grades.

Textbook Technology Supplements: What are They Good for?.

Technology supplements to college textbooks, such as self-guided quizzes and exercises available over the Internet, have become commonplace. The current study examined student perceptions regarding the utility of technology supplements that accompanied a public speaking fundamentals textbook. At semesters end, students reported the supplements to be less useful than they had expected. The supplements were perceived to be more useful by females than by males. The supplements were reported to be more useful when they were required than when they were not. Students perceived technology supplements to be most helpful as study aids and speech preparation tools, but only when they worked properly, were required, and were related directly to course objectives. Instructors are ultimately responsible for ensuring that technology supplements function properly for their students.

The Online Communication Course: The Challenges

While online courses are not new, the challenges they create for communication educators remain significant. The purpose of this study is to identify those issues communication educators confront in teaching one type of online communication courses, asynchronous courses that include course delivery, information transaction, and communication via the Internet. The authors discuss the importance of this dynamic form of course delivery to the new generation of students, the Millenials, as they permeate higher education institutions.

Fuzzy Facebook privacy boundaries

Managing privacy in the interconnected digital interaction environment of Facebook can be a complex yet vital endeavor. This study utilizes the theoretical framework of Communication Privacy Management (CPM) theory to explore relationships between concern about mediated lurking, strategic ambiguity (or vague-booking) on Facebook, and Facebook privacy management. The study explores three hypotheses. Overall, 383 participants completed an online survey instrument. Greater concern about mediated lurking was related to more Facebook privacy management. More frequent use of strategic ambiguity on Facebook was related to less Facebook privacy management. Individuals who were more highly concerned about mediated lurking were also more likely to employ more frequent use of strategic ambiguity on Facebook. Men engaged in significantly greater use of strategic ambiguity on Facebook and enacted significantly less Facebook privacy management than did women. Implications and future research related to Facebook privacy management from a CPM perspective are explored. We use communication privacy management theory to explore Facebook privacy.Greater concern about mediated lurking is related to more privacy management.More frequent use of vague-booking is related to less privacy management.Concern about mediated lurking is related to use of vague-booking on Facebook.Men use more vague-booking and enact less privacy management than do women.

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Parental and Peer Attachment Styles among Adult Children from the United States, Puerto Rico, and India

Parental and peer attachment is central to perceived and actual communication behavior. This investigation examines perceptions of attachment among people from the United States, Puerto Rico, and India to investigate the variance in parental and peer attachment levels cross-culturally. Puerto Rican participants expressed less overall attachment to their mothers than did Indian and American participants. Indian participants conveyed stronger attachment to their fathers compared to participants from Puerto Rico. US participants showed stronger attachment to their peers than did people from India. This investigation suggests that the tenets of attachment theory are not culturally universal.

Diversity and Power in Public Speaking Textbooks

The frequency of gender and ethnic groups in positions of power represented in photographs in the top 10 public speaking textbooks were investigated. Men are pictured in power positions more often than are women. In photos displaying multiple ethnicities, with or without Caucasians, people of other ethnicities were more likely to be shown in positions of power than were Caucasians. This discrepant finding is particularly interesting in light of the consistent finding on gender.

The Influence of Biological Sex, Self-Esteem, and Communication Apprehension on Unwillingness to Communicate

Role identity influences communication behaviors, particularly unwillingness to communicate, or the tendency to avoid oral communication, a phenomenon that communication instructors observe in many of their students. This investigation explores the effect of biological sex, self-esteem, and communication apprehension on the reward and approach-avoidance dimensions of unwillingness to communicate. Multiple regression analyses revealed significant relationships between biological sex and self-esteem on the reward dimension and biological sex and communication apprehension on the approach-avoidance dimension. Results suggest that women and men view communication differently and may be socialized to behave differently during communication encounters. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed for communication instructors.

What are Students Being Taught about Ethics in Public Speaking Textbooks

Current conceptions of communication and ethics were investigated in the top ten public speaking textbooks in the communication discipline. Content analysis was used to examine eight ethical topic areas within each textbook. Results indicate the textbooks by Lucas, Jaffe, Beebe and Beebe, and Brydon and Scott provide the most overall coverage to ethics. In addition, plagiarism, ethnical listening, honesty, and ethical research are discussed most frequently while freedom of speech, hate words, and codes of ethics are least discussed among the top ten selling public speaking books. Each author references different philosophers, defines ethics, and describes the consequences of cheating in diverse ways. The implications of how ethics is not given the same amount of space in the top ten best-selling public speaking textbooks are discussed.

Rituals in Committed Romantic Relationships: The Creation and Validation of an Instrument

Rituals are widely studied in interpersonal communication research, but no instrument for assessing the preceived use of rituals among couples in committed romantic relationships exists. The purpose of this investigation was to create and validate such a measure (Rituals in Committed Romantic Relationships; RCRR). Five-hundred-sixty individuals in committed romantic relationships responded to a 50-item questionnaire that measured 5 sets of rituals pertaining to daily routines and tasks, idiosyncratic behavior, everyday talk, intimacy, and couple-time. In addition, they completed measures of perceived relational quality and perceived relational intimacy. Multiple analyses supported a 5-factor model consisting of 30 of the original 50 items. Perceived use of rituals was predictive of alterations in both perceived relational quality and perceived relational intimacy.