This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 19 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: an informal communication process with implications for information retrieval; a rhetorical approach to the nonsexist language controversy; a validation study of communication apprehension scales; factors influencing teacher credibility, speaker credibility, and listener comprehension; the communication between the University of Minnesota and the 1975 Minnesota State Legislature; mathematical models of communication and belief change; the effects of confidence and utility on information seeking and processing; procedures used to assign students to remedial oral communication instruction; the effects of presenting an intercultural communication unit in the basic speech course; a comparison of results of a communication skills scale, a dogmatism scale, and a behavioral assessment of a counseling simulation; doctor/patient communication problems; verbal correlates of instructional effectiveness with young children; factors affecting evaluation of a belief-discrepant message by religious fundamentalists; and the measurement of interpersonal communication satisfaction. (GW)