This research extended earlier public goods research on individual incentives to use an organizational information commons that was based in Marwell and Oliver's (1993) collective action model. A revised theoretical model that incorporated team-level social influence and technology-specific competence was proposed. The model was tested using…

This study aimed to examine when children come to distinguish between the private affairs of an individual and the group's matter in relation to group decision making and whether there are any differences between Japan and England in learning the distinction. In total 217 children aged 8, 11, and 13 years, and undergraduates participated in the…

A daily war is waged in schools all over the United States over wall space. Adolescents are using school walls to convey messages, create name recognition, slander each other, or for claiming territorial space. On the other side is the school administration, which paints over and erases these unsanctioned claims to space, power and identity, as it…

Most asynchronous computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments can be characterized as "functional" environments because they focus on functional, task-specific support, often disregarding explicit support for the social (emotional) aspects of learning in groups which are acknowledged by many educational researchers to…

A study investigated the relationship between television program type preference and program choice in a multichannel situation. Program type categories were constructed which tapped in the program type distinction mentally represented in viewers' minds and a more elaborate measure of program choice options was developed. A total of 442…

While a number of feature films can be used in group-process instruction, "Twelve Angry Men" and "The Breakfast Club" are particularly valuable for analyzing group communication patterns and strategies. "Twelve Angry Men" demonstrates that persuasion in groups can take place through a variety of methods. Exercises…

Problems in organizational groups are often defined around one pivotal and difficult group member. Based upon C. Stohl and S. Schell's concepts of farrago (a confusing group member who becomes the relational focus of the group), 28 undergraduate students and management personnel who frequently participate in group work were interviewed to validate…

Defines interpersonal communicative behavior as behavior serving to increase immediate feelings of satisfaction, and investigates the relationships between this behavior and self-concepts. (MH)

In a study of links between group acceptance and friendship among children in elementary school, 278 third- through sixth-graders, nearly evenly divided by sex, were assessed with measures of level of peer acceptance, primary and secondary friendship, friendship quality, loneliness, and social dissatisfaction. Findings suggested that the…

Research studies on group versus individual bystander responses either have involved nonviolent emergencies or laboratory simulations. To investigate group versus individual bystander response to a violent assualt in a natural setting, 80 male college students (from an original pool of 393 white, male students) were observed either individually or…

Voluntary support of higher education in America is investigated through regression analysis of institutional characteristics at two points in time. The assumption of donor rationality together with explicit consideration of interorganizational relationships offers a coherent framework for the analysis of voluntary support by the major…

Research provided a comprehensive descriptive analysis of the Iowa adult basic education (ABE) population. Data were collected through comprehensive interviews from a carefully drawn random sample (n=323) of those who completed less than 11 grades. A random subsample was followed up by telephone interview. The population was described on three…

An Attitude Toward Blindness Questionnaire (ATBQ) was developed to assess individual progress through a Veterans Administration blind rehabilitation program. The instrument is also meant to measure attitudes toward blindness for blind persons, rehabilitation workers, and a "naive" group without contact with the blind. A method of…

The major purpose of this study was to define the particular ways children's informal interactions in groups are important in their negotiations of playground games within school settings. Data, gathered over a 3-month period on the playgrounds of three elementary schools, consisted of 23 audiotaped records of children's spontaneously organized…