Jeffrey T Child

• Professor (Associate) at Kent State University

Young adults may interact on Facebook in ways that makes them feel vulnerable about parental Facebook friend requests. This study utilizes Communication Privacy Management theory as a framework to investigate how young adult Facebook users respond to parental Facebook friend requests. Overall, 235 individuals completed an online survey. Results con...

Communication Privacy Management (CPM) theory explains one of the most important, yet challenging social processes in everyday life, that is, managing disclosing and protecting private information. The CPM privacy management system offers researchers, students, and the public a comprehensive approach to the complex and fluid character of privacy ma...

This essay examines the current state of theorizing and scholarship in family communication practices. It lays out a vision for the future of family communication research and scholarship along with exploring some of the issues advanced by previous editors of the journal. Finally, the essay identifies what authors can expect from the new editor of...

Social media users are able to read, share, and discuss news online with other people coming from diverse contexts in their lives, including family members, co-workers, and friends. Past research has indicated that “context collapse” occurs when people must imagine and negotiate interacting with a large and diverse online audience. Using survey dat...

For older adults, approaching end-of-life (EOL) brings unique transitions related to family relationships. Unfortunately, most families greatly underestimate the need to discuss these difficult issues. For example, parents approaching EOL issues often struggle with receiving assistance from others, avoiding family conflict, and maintaining their se...

For older adults, approaching end-of-life (EOL) brings unique transitions related to family relationships. Unfortunately, most families greatly underestimate the need to discuss these difficult issues. For example, parents approaching EOL issues often struggle with receiving assistance from others, avoiding family conflict, and maintaining their se...

How young adults communicate with multiple generations of family members today includes the use of Facebook to maintain family relationships. This study applies communication privacy management (CPM) theory to explore how young adults interact with and manage private information across different generations of their family through Facebook. Overall...

In today's world, the central role of privacy in the realm of organizational and business management is evident. Although, privacy is a common factor influencing many choices organizations make, the complexity of understanding the best way to address privacy issues is not necessarily clear. However, using a theoretical lens that focuses on how, beh...

This chapter in Carol J. Bruess' edited book "Family Communication in the Age of Digital and Social Media" explores communication, social media, disclosure, and privacy management practices within the family context. It utilizes Petronio's (2002) theoretical framework of Communication Privacy Management to consider the research conducted in this ar...

Previous research concluded that victims of rapid-onset natural disasters (e.g., hurricanes) receive and provide high levels of instrumental support. However, different kinds of disasters (natural or human caused [technological, environmental, intentional/terrorism], rapid or slow onset, short or long duration) may create different stressors and th...

To better understand the process of disclosing medical errors to patients, this research offers a case analysis using Petronios’s theoretical frame of Communication Privacy Management (CPM). Given the resistance clinicians often feel about error disclosure, insights into the way choices are made by the clinicians in telling patients about the mista...

This two-part study first examines the accuracy of participants’ self-perceptions of creativity and looks at the effects of positive or negative feedback on creativity capability or output. Results of online testing showed that participants with higher self-perceived creativity were ultimately more creative. In part two, participants were provided...

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-avoi...

Rituals have been widely studied in interpersonal communication research, but no instrument measures perceived ritual use in dating relationships. The purpose of this study, through surveying 590 individuals in dating relationships, was to create and validate the Rituals in Dating Relationships (RDR) measure. Confirmatory factor analysis and struct...

Background: Widespread amphibole-asbestos exposure in Libby, Montana created what EPA called the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history (>300 deaths; hundreds with asbestos-related disease (ARD). Like Love Canal, Libby represents a different kind of disaster (Levine, 1982). Slow-motion technological disasters (SMTDs) are characterized by slow...

The current study utilized communication privacy management (CPM) theory to examine how individuals’ blogging privacy management rules are related to their communication-based personality dispositions (self-monitoring skills and concern for enacting socially appropriate interactions). The study also explored relationships between the same dispositi...

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...

Do intimacy rituals affect perceptions of relational intimacy and relational quality? This study examined the effect of self-reported use of intimacy rituals and biological sex on perceived relational intimacy and perceived relational quality. Perceived use of intimacy rituals was positively related to perceived relational quality. However, perceiv...

This study applied Communication Privacy Management (CPM) theory to the context of blogging and developed a validated, theory-based measure of blogging privacy management. Across three studies, 823 college student bloggers completed an online survey. In study one (n = 176), exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis techniques tested four potenti...

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of student motivation, unwillingness to communicate, first-generation college status, and biological sex on students' public speaking grades. A standard multiple regression analysis tested the hypothesis. Participants were enrolled in public speaking courses at two midwestern universities. The...

This study examined family problems and problem solving among American Upper Midwest and Puerto Ricans participants. Thematic and chi-square analyses provide a snapshot of how diverse families experience similar macro problems in day-to-day endeavors. Responses to each macro issue or strategy also suggest ways that the two cultural groups relate to...

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 th...

Co-cultural differences in assertiveness within the United States have not been explored, despite noted regional differences in communication patterns (Andersen, Lustig, & Andersen, 1987). This study examines assertiveness behaviors, focusing on university students from the Upper Midwest (n = 148) and the New York Metropolitan region (n = 159) who...

College students use technology to gather information and conduct their daily lives. Textbooks increasingly relate course content to students through technology. An analysis of the top ten public speaking textbooks revealed the ways in which technology is addressed within information-gathering chapters. Seven areas of technology were identified: se...

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 one's team had accurate who-k...

Communication apprehension is arguably the largest problem facing novice public speakers. To succeed in the basic communication course, students must learn to overcome or lessen the communication apprehension they feel. Because students learn about communication apprehension largely through the texts they use, the coverage that top ten selling publ...

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...

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 et...

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 ent...

Family problems are ubiquitous, consequential, and experienced by families around the world. The current study examines how the methods of inquiry used to gather information from Japanese college students about their family problems shape the reported problems. Fifty-five students completed a survey through a direct question protocol and 20 partici...

College student alcohol consumption is pervasive and problematic at most U.S. college and university campuses. This study focuses on understanding college students who consume high levels of alcohol, providing healthy insight into what have been perceived by researchers as unhealthy behaviors. Researchers conducted 6 mediated focus group discussion...

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 semester's end, students reported the supplements to...

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 positi...

Instructional communication scholars examine three different types of learning outcomes: cognitive learning, affective learning, and behavioral learning. Cognitive and affective learning have been more substantially re-searched (Messman & Jones-Corley, 2001; McCroskey & McCroskey, 2006; Whitt, Wheeless, & Allen, 2004) in comparison to the limited g...