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The purpose of this dissertation was to develop a Compassionate Communication Scale (CCS) by conducting a series of studies. The first study used qualitative data to identify and develop initial scale items. A series of follow-up studies used exploratory factor analysis to investigate the underlying structure of the CCS. A

The purpose of this dissertation was to develop a Compassionate Communication Scale (CCS) by conducting a series of studies. The first study used qualitative data to identify and develop initial scale items. A series of follow-up studies used exploratory factor analysis to investigate the underlying structure of the CCS. A three-factor structure emerged, which included: Compassionate conversation, such as listening, letting the distressed person disclose feelings, and making empathetic remarks; compassionate touch, such as holding someone's hand or patting someone's back; and compassionate messaging, such as posting an encouraging message on a social networking site or sending a sympathetic email. The next study tested convergent and divergent validity by determining how the three forms of compassionate communication associate with various traits. Compassionate conversation was positively related to compassion, empathetic concern, perspective taking, emotional intelligence, social expressivity, emotional expressivity and benevolence, and negatively related to verbal aggressiveness and narcissism. Compassionate touch was positively correlated with compassion, empathetic concern, perspective taking, emotional intelligence, social expressivity, emotional expressivity, and benevolence, and uncorrelated with verbal aggressiveness and benevolence. Finally, compassionate messaging was positively correlated with social expressivity, emotional expressivity, and uncorrelated with verbal aggressiveness and narcissism. The next study focused on cross-validation and criterion-related validity. Correlations showing that self-reports of a person's compassionate communication were positively related to a friend or romantic partner's report of that person's compassionate communication provided cross-validation. The test for criterion-related validity examined whether compassionate communication predicts relational satisfaction. Regression analyses revealed that people were more relationally satisfied when they perceived themselves to use compassionate conversation, when they perceived their partner to use compassionate conversation, and when their partner reported using compassionate conversation. This finding did not extend to compassionate touch or compassionate messaging. In fact, in one regression analysis, people reported more relational satisfaction when they perceived that their partners used high levels of compassionate conversation and low levels of compassionate touch. Overall, the analyses suggest that of the three forms of compassionate communication, compassionate conversation is most strongly related to relational satisfaction. Taken together, this series of studies provides initial evidence for the validity of the CCS.
ContributorsRamos Salazar, Leslie (Author) / Guerrero, Laura (Thesis advisor) / Roberto, Anthony (Committee member) / Millsap, Roger (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
The division of domestic labor has far-reaching implications for "private" life (e.g. relational satisfaction and conflict) and for "public" paid labor (e.g. time and dedication in the workplace and career advancement). Although several theories have been developed and tested, they do not sufficiently explain the consistent findings that women in

The division of domestic labor has far-reaching implications for "private" life (e.g. relational satisfaction and conflict) and for "public" paid labor (e.g. time and dedication in the workplace and career advancement). Although several theories have been developed and tested, they do not sufficiently explain the consistent findings that women in mixed sex households perform a majority of the domestic labor. Without understanding the causes for differences in task performance, past research encouraging communicative solutions to ameliorate conflict was ineffective in changing task allocation and performance. Therefore, it is necessary to understand theoretical explanations that drive domestic labor behavior to develop effective solutions. The recent integrative theory of the division of domestic labor attempts to explain how individuals interact with household partners to allocate domestic tasks. Recognizing the complexity of the division of domestic labor, the integrative theory considers individual, dyadic, and societal factors that influence task allocation. Because clear differences in task performance have been found in mixed sex households, this study separates sex and gender as distinct variables by considering same-sex roommate relationships, essentially removing sex differences from the living arrangement. Furthermore, this study considers individual threshold levels as described by the integrative theory in order to test the theoretical underpinnings. Specifically, this study is designed to investigate the relationships between individual cleanliness threshold levels and gender, sex, perceptions of satisfaction, equity, and frequency of conflict in same-sex roommate relationships. Results indicate support of the integrative theory of the division of domestic labor. Regarding gender differences, partial support for the theory appeared in that feminine individuals have lower threshold levels than masculine individuals. Regarding sex differences, women possess lower individual threshold levels (i.e. more bothered when a task is undone) compared to men, which likely accounts for why existing research indicates that women spend more time performing domestic tasks. What is more, individuals with higher threshold levels report greater relational satisfaction. Further, individuals whose threshold levels differ from their living partner report lower relational satisfaction and greater conflict frequency. Finally, in terms of equity, both overbenefited and underbenefited individuals experience more conflict than those who feel their relationship is equitable. These results provide theoretical support for the integrative theory of the division of labor. Furthermore, the development and testing of a threshold measure scale can be used practically for future research and for better roommate pairings by universities. In addition, communication scholars, family practitioners and counselors, and universities can apply these theoretically grounded research findings to develop and test strategies to reduce conflict and increase relational satisfaction among roommates and couples.
ContributorsRiforgiate, Sarah (Author) / Alberts, Jess K. (Thesis advisor) / Mongeau, Paul (Thesis advisor) / Roberto, Anthony (Committee member) / Romero, Mary (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
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Description
The 21st-century professional or knowledge worker spends much of the working day engaging others through electronic communication. The modes of communication available to knowledge workers have rapidly increased due to computerized technology advances: conference and video calls, instant messaging, e-mail, social media, podcasts, audio books, webinars, and much more. Professionals

The 21st-century professional or knowledge worker spends much of the working day engaging others through electronic communication. The modes of communication available to knowledge workers have rapidly increased due to computerized technology advances: conference and video calls, instant messaging, e-mail, social media, podcasts, audio books, webinars, and much more. Professionals who think for a living express feelings of stress about their ability to respond and fear missing critical tasks or information as they attempt to wade through all the electronic communication that floods their inboxes. Although many electronic communication tools compete for the attention of the contemporary knowledge worker, most professionals use an electronic personal information management (PIM) system, more commonly known as an e-mail application and often the ubiquitous Microsoft Outlook program. The aim of this research was to provide knowledge workers with solutions to manage the influx of electronic communication that arrives daily by studying the workers in their working environment. This dissertation represents a quest to understand the current strategies knowledge workers use to manage their e-mail, and if modification of e-mail management strategies can have an impact on productivity and stress levels for these professionals. Today’s knowledge workers rarely work entirely alone, justifying the importance of also exploring methods to improve electronic communications within teams.
ContributorsCounts, Virginia (Author) / Parrish, Kristen (Thesis advisor) / Allenby, Braden (Thesis advisor) / Landis, Amy (Committee member) / Cooke, Nancy J. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
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Description

This study investigated how young adults communicate their decision to religiously disaffiliate to their parents. Both the context in which the religious disaffiliation conversation took place and the communicative behaviors used during the religious disaffiliation conversation were studied. Research questions and hypotheses were guided by Family Communication Patterns Theory and

This study investigated how young adults communicate their decision to religiously disaffiliate to their parents. Both the context in which the religious disaffiliation conversation took place and the communicative behaviors used during the religious disaffiliation conversation were studied. Research questions and hypotheses were guided by Family Communication Patterns Theory and Face Negotiation Theory. A partially mixed sequential quantitative dominate status design was employed to answer the research questions and hypotheses. Interviews were conducted with 10 young adults who had either disaffiliated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or the Watch Tower Society. During the interviews, the survey instrument was refined; ultimately, it was completed by 298 religiously disaffiliated young adults. For the religious disaffiliation conversation’s context, results indicate that disaffiliated Jehovah’s Witnesses had higher conformity orientations than disaffiliated Latter-day Saints. Additionally, disaffiliated Jehovah’s Witnesses experienced more stress than disaffiliated Latter-day Saints. Planning the conversation in advance did lead to the disaffiliation conversation being less stressful for young adults. Furthermore, the analysis found that having three to five conversations reduced stress significantly more than having one or two conversations. For the communicative behaviors during the religious disaffiliation conversation, few differences were found in regard to prevalence of the facework behaviors between the two groups. Of the 14 facework behaviors, four were used more often by disaffiliated JW than disaffiliated LDS—abuse, passive aggressive, pretend, and defend self. In terms of effectiveness, the top five facework behaviors were talk about the problem, consider the other, have a private discussion, remain calm, and defend self. Overall, this study begins the conversation on how religious disaffiliation occurs between young adults and their parents and extends Family Communication Patterns Theory and Face Negotiation Theory to a new context.

ContributorsFisk, Megan R (Author) / Cheong, Pauline (Thesis advisor) / Roberto, Anthony (Committee member) / Gee, James (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Description
Sexual violence is a problem on college campuses across that United States. In the past few years, federal and state legislation has been drafted in order to address campus sexual violence. A main feature of this legislation addresses an important communicative construct related to students’ sexual behavior: sexual

Sexual violence is a problem on college campuses across that United States. In the past few years, federal and state legislation has been drafted in order to address campus sexual violence. A main feature of this legislation addresses an important communicative construct related to students’ sexual behavior: sexual consent. Colleges and universities are adopting an affirmative-standard of consent, which emphasizes that consent for sexual activity be communicated verbally or via unambiguous actions, mutual, voluntary, enthusiastic, and ongoing throughout the sexual encounter. Literature has explored how college students communicate and interpret sexual consent, but antecedents to sexual consent behaviors, particularly affirmative consent, are largely unknown.

The current investigation seeks to longitudinally explore the antecedents to college students’ affirmative sexual consent behaviors (i.e., nonverbal, initiating, verbal). Using the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) as a theoretical framework, hypotheses predicted that at Time 1 (T1) attitudes, norms, and perceived behavioral control would positively and significantly predict students’ (T1) intentions to communicate affirmative consent to their partner. Then, it was predicted that at Time 2 (T2)—thirty days later—intentions to communicate consent from T1 would positively and significantly predict college students’ communication of affirmative consent to their partner during their most recent sexual encounter. The final matched (i.e., completed T1 and T2 surveys) sample included two hundred twenty-five (N = 225) college students who had engaged in sexual activity during the 30 days between survey distributions. Results from the path analyses support the theoretically driven hypotheses for all three affirmative consent behaviors, and demonstrate that subjective norms and perceived control are important and strong determinants of students’ communication of affirmative sexual consent. Furthermore, multi-group invariance tested the potential moderating effects of three individual, two dyadic, and two environmental/contextual variables on the strength of path coefficients between TPB constructs for all three sexual consent behaviors. Only individual and environmental/contextual variables significantly moderated relationships within the TPB for the three models. Results are discussed with regard to theoretical implications as well as practical implications for university health educators and other health professionals. Additionally, limitations and future directions are noted.
ContributorsBednarchik, Lori A (Author) / Costigan Lederman, Linda (Thesis advisor) / Mongeau, Paul (Thesis advisor) / Roberto, Anthony (Committee member) / Christopher, F Scott (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016