A substantial number of published articles in speech communication research today is experimental/social scientific in nature. It is only in the past decade that scholars have begun to put the history of communication under the lens. Early advocates of the adoption of the method of social scientific inquiry were J. A. Winans, J. M. O'Neill, and C.…

Applied psychologists who provide services to nations composed of multiple and widely varied cultural groups face certain ethical dilemmas that would not arise in more homogeneous societies. These ethical dilemmas revolve around the concept of population generalizability, which refers to the applicability of research findings across different…

This paper examines concepts in information-processing theory which are likely to be relevant to development and characterizes the methods and data upon which the concepts are based. Among the concepts examined are those which have slight empirical grounds. Other concepts examined are those which seem to have empirical bases but which are…

Many articles have appeared in the educational, instructional, and psychological literature questioning the adequacy of the technology available for devising instruction, and the usability of the instructional research literature as a source of the technology. A systematic planning model is a useful framework for organizing what has to be done to…

This brief paper presents a sequential walk through a simple research setting--a two group experiment--to indicate common but avoidable design difficulties that may jeopardize the usefulness of the data obtained. The six flaws examined are the failure to select subjects from the population to which generalizations are to be made; failure to use…

This five-part document presents three approaches to research on instructional improvement, with the final two sections concentrating on problems and implications for diagnostic prescriptive instruction. Part 1 reviews comparative instructional effectiveness studies. Part 2 discusses the Trait-Treatment Interaction Approach (TTI) which is…

Among young American Indians, a radical social movement has been evolving, as has a common ideology, because historical and social conditions have unified tribes in an awareness of a common identity and a common set of problems. A key tenet of this ideology has been a challenge to the legitimacy of the social sciences. This aspect of the movement…

This paper attempts to identify appropriate theoretical frameworks for the study of Black family life. The author concludes by calling upon Black family researchers to become more sensitive to inherent "objective/subjective" biases in contemporary theorizing about Black families. (Author)

A reply to a rejoinder in which Pascual-Leone defended his quantitative model of children's information processing capacity. Trabasso focuses on empirical evidence in presenting his reply to this rejoinder. (BD)

The field of comparative administration should relax its preoccupation with ecological theories and aggregate data technologies and move on to systematic field research in multiple settings. (Author)

Presents a table of cases requiring causal modeling or an equivalent technique. Reviews nine years of published research in communication journals to assess the adequacy of analysis in these situations. Offers standards for the conduct and reporting of causal modeling along with a review of their use in published causal modeling. (NKA)

This article critically examines the evidence for interpersonal complementarity according to four recent theories. The only prediction found to be regularly supported is that friendly-dominant and friendly-submissive behaviors are complementary. A repeated finding is that hostile-dominant acts are frequently responded to with further…

Temperament and attachment, as defined by Bowlby and his followers, are fundamentally different constructs, and research guided by the attachment perspective cannot meaningfully be assimilated to the temperament construct. Qualitative aspects of relationships simply cannot be reduced to individual behavioral dimensions. (RH)

Examined the potential effects of correlated measurement errors among responses of wives and their husbands (N=349) on the utility of and expectations for another child. There was no change in the previous finding that wife's and husband's child utility had equal effects on expectations for another child. (JAC)

Following the assumptions of ecological socialization research, adequate analysis of socialization conditions must take into account the multilevel and multivariate structure of social factors that impact on human development. This statement implies that complex models of family configurations or of socialization factors are needed to explain the…