Limitations of Interpersonal Communciation Research :: essays research papers

When taking a limit of an equation in Calculus, a limit doesnot always exist. However, in the real word there arealways limitations to what people can accomplish no liaisonhow hard they work or try. These limitations are evident in social commuciation look for as well. In the article,"Commucication Apprehension Among SecretarialStudents," the authors, Melanie Booth-Butterfield andCarol C. Thomas, research and examine the levels of traitcommunication terror among students enrolled incollege level fleck administration programs. In thefollowing paragraphs I will discuss the sour and twolimitations of the research.In the article, the authors seek to investigate communicationapprehension among secretarial students. Communicationapprehension is an individuals level of fear or anxietyassociated with communicationg with others(Booth-Butterfield & Thomas, 1995, pp. 39). Themethodological framework utilitized by the authors was toadminister questionnaires during unfluctuatin g class time in fourdifferent sections. This survey include a measure of traitcommunication apprehension and anxiety crosswise fourdifferent areas of interpersonal, small group, meeting andpublic speaking. In addition, the questionnaire asked for the days and whether the participants have had experience in aco-op role or as a secretary for a regular teleph star circuit. Theparticipants of the questionaire were 117 random studentsenrolled at a four-year, technical business-oriented college.Of these students, 58 were female students enrolledfull-time in constituent administration courses. The remainingstudents were not secretarial students but were enrolled inbusiness administration, management, and communicationcourses. The results of the survey clearly showed a highercommunication apprehension among secretarial studentsthan non-secretarial students rergardless of age or commercial enterpriseexperience. Furthermore, secretarial students showedanxiety in all four areas of communica tion especially inpublic speaking. In conlusion to the research, the authorssay that the anxiety experienced by many officeadminstration students should be observable and willsubstatntively influence their per wee-weeance in classes and onthe job (Booth-Butterfield & Thomas, 1995, pp. 39).Although this communication apprehension research seemsreasonable, limitations include the type of entropy used and therelationships or generalizations that are drawn betweencertain variables. To develop with, the methodologicalframework utilized by the author is in the form of aquestionairre. A questionairre is basically a test to see howone thinks of his or herself and is not necessarily accurate.For example, an individual may think he or she isapprehensive to communication but when actuallyconfronted with the scenerio may fare rather well andwithout any fear or anxiety. Perhaps a bettermethodological approach in gathering data is to setup anactual communication setting and have the parti cipantsperform to the communication task. The data should bebased on the performance as well as feedback from theparticipant to see if the communication apprehension was