Paul D. Turman

• Ph.D. Interpersonal Communication
• System Vice President for Academic Affairs at South Dakota Board of Regents

The article presents a classroom activity that focuses on student's participation in a press conference about John Rocker. It relates that the activity aims to help students incorporate to themselves the principles of apologia and image repair research, which is considered useful when constructing a message for image restoration. It also discusses...

This essay argues that the rise of music video and subsequent personal narratives about successful artists/groups reinforce the idea of a meritocracy in the American culture. One such program, VH1's Behind the Music (BTM), is exclusively focused on telling these personal stories. We contend that this narrative form of storytelling reinforces a cent...

This study tested two models of instructor credibility as a potential mediator of instructors' prosocial communication behaviors (e.g., confirmation, clarity, and nonverbal immediacy) and students' learning outcomes. Participants included 1,416 undergraduate students from four different institutions across the United States. Results of structural e...

Objectives: To help students: (1) understand relationship breakups on both a theoretical and applied level; (2) understand how/why the subsequent termination narratives are created by applying Duck's Dissolution Model to their relationship experiences with special focus on the grave dressing phase Courses: Interpersonal Communication, Basic Communi...

This study sought to determine whether coaches' immediacy behaviors serve as predictors of athletes' satisfaction and team cohesion levels. Participants included 307 male and female high school athletes who completed measures assessing perceptions of their coaches' verbal and nonverbal immediacy behaviors, as well as their own levels of satisfactio...

This study tested two theoretical models of learner empowerment as a potential mediator of teacher power use and students' ratings of instruction. Participants included 1,416 undergraduate students from four different institutions in the United States. Results of structural equation modeling provided more support for the partial mediation model tha...

Three studies were conducted to (a) re-examine the internal properties of Roach's Power Base Measure (PBM), (b) test the PBM for measurement invariance across different samples, and (c) develop an alternative measure of observable teacher behaviors that communicate power in the classroom. Results of Studies 1 and 2 provide some support for the PBM,...

This study examined video footage (i.e., pregame, halftime, and postgame) of high school basketball coaches' interactions with their male and female athletes during competition, focusing on coaches' use of various regret messages. Participants included 20 high school basketball coaches who were found to use a combination of regret messages: individ...

Two studies were conducted to examine parental and family influences that help encourage young athletes' sport participation. In Study 1, former high school athletes (N = 276) reflected upon their families' sport orientation and perceived parental compliance-gaining techniques (activation of impersonal commitment, expertise, rewarding behaviors). F...

This study explored the influence of athletes' playing status on perceptions of coach power use, and how such behaviors served as predictors of athletes' satisfaction for their sport. Participants included male and female high school football and basketball players who completed measures of their coaches' power use (coercive, referent, legitimate,...

This study tested two theoretical models of perceived understanding as a potential mediator of perceived teacher confirmation and students' ratings of instruction. Participants included 651 undergraduate students who completed survey measures. Results of structural equation modeling provided greater support for the confirmation process model, where...

This study explored the associations among perceived teacher confirmation behaviors (i.e., demonstrating interest, responding to questions, and teaching style) and student perceptions of teacher power use (i.e., coercive, reward, expert, legitimate, and referent power). Participants included 656 students from two Midwestern universities. Results re...

Objective: The objective of this activity is twofold: (1) To engage students in the practice of small-group decision making in a computer-mediated communication (CMC) environment; and (2) to demonstrate the taken for granted elements for small-group development and decision making Courses: Small-Group Communication, Technology and Human Communicati...

This study examined the impact that instructional technology use, course design, and instructor and student sex differences have on students’ initial perceptions of affect toward the course and the instructor. Participants included 864 students who were randomly assigned to read one of 16 scenarios that manipulated the amount of instructional techn...

By focusing on coaches' use of anticipatory and counterfactual regret messages, this investigation examined video footage (i.e., pre-game, halftime, and post-game speeches) of high school football coaches' interaction with their athletes during competition. Participants were 17 high school football coaches who were found to use a combination of reg...

This study explores the impact that instructional technology use, course design, and sex differences have on students’ initial perceptions of instructors’ credibility (i.e., competence, trustworthiness, and perceived caring). Participants included 864 students from two Midwestern universities who were randomly assigned to one of 16 experimental con...

This study explored the relationships among coaches’ leadership behaviors and student athletes’ affective learning. Participants included 124 student athletes from 17 high school wrestling teams who completed measures of both their coaches’ leadership behaviors and their own affective learning for sport Results indicated that all five coaching lead...

The community of sport is a pervasive, influential, complex, and restricted community comprised not only of participants such as coaches, athletes, and referees, but also of spectators at both live and mediated sporting events. Additionally, sports media, amateur and professional sports organizations, sport governing bodies, and fan clubs occupy te...

One learning environment that has gone largely unexamined in the communication field is the context of coaching. Athletic coaches bear some similarities and also some differences relative to classroom instruction. The present study examined the influence of coach experience on young athletes' preferences for, and perceptions of, coaches' leadership...

This investigation examines athletes’ preferences and perceptions and coaches’ perceptions of leadership styles used throughout an athletic season. The review of literature identified an existing limitation to current examinations of coaching styles. Past researchers failed to include time as a potential variable affecting athletes’ preferences and...

We adopted a process-focus in order to gain a deeper understanding of how (step) blended family members experiencing different developmental pathways discursively represented their processes of becoming a family. Using a qualitative/interpretive method, we analyzed 980 pages of interview transcripts with stepparents and stepchildren. We studied the...