Faculty and Graduate Research

Faculty and graduate students within the Department of Communication Studies regularly advance the knowledge base within the field of communication. Topics are amazingly diverse, representing widely varied interests and specialties.

Following are just a few examples of recent faculty research efforts:

• "Attention to repeated images on the World-Wide Web: Another look at scanpath theory," published in Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers
• “Can there be a single system for peer assessment of professionalism among medical students? A multi-institutional study.” Published in Academic Medicine
• “Changing Medical Students’ Attitudes about Older Adults and Future Patients,” published in Academic Medicine.
• “Critical Incidents and Communication during the Progression of Alzheimer’s Disease from the Perspective of Family Caregivers,” published in Alzheimer’s Care Quarterly.
• “From transgression to transformation: Negotiating the opportunities and tensions of engaged pedagogy in the feminist organizational” Published In Communication Studies
• “I never felt more uncomfortable in my life: University student’s discursive constructions of The Lesbian Convention,”
• “Impression Management in Chat Rooms: A Grounded Theory Mode,” published in Communication Studies.
• “innovation Roles: From Souls of Fire to Devil’s,” published in the Journal of Business Communication
• “Maximizing Participation in Peer Assessment of Professionalism: The Students’ Speak,” published in Academic Medicine.
• “Paranoia and paradox: The apocalyptic rhetoric of Christian identity, published in Western Journal of Communication
• “Service learning: Students’ transformative journey from communication studies graduate to communication professional,” published in the Southern Communication Journal
• “The empowerment dilemma: The dialectic of emancipation and control in staff/client interaction at shelters for battered women,” Published in Communication Studies.
• “The Hardest Hate: A Sociological Analysis of Hate Music,” published in Popular Music and Society.
• “Theories of family relationships and a family relationships theoretical model,” published in the Handbook of Family Communication
• “When they know who we are: The National Women’s Music Festival comes to Ball State University.” Published in Gender in Applied Communication Contexts.

Ball State graduate students also provide a significant contribution to the body of knowledge in communication. Here are just a few examples of topics investigated in graduate theses:

• Rediscovering web credibility.
• The effects of verbally aggressive messages on women’s self-concepts within romantic relationships.
• “Without flirting it wouldn’t be a marriage”: The relationship between flirting, relational maintenance and marital satisfaction
• Relational dialectics within the marriage involving spousal alcohol abuse.
• Learning in correctional facilities: The effects of education on student-inmates.
• The effects of listening quality, biological sex, and gender on leader-member exchange relationships.
• The National Alliance website and the socialization value of Internet texts.
• A thematic analysis of the “coming out” process for transgendered individuals.
• Speaking up, speaking out: Female Lutheran pastors’ sermons and the use of persuasion.
• A critical analysis of worldview and culture in business incubation narratives.
• “IT’s not on my ‘to do’ list”: The discursive construction of workplace diversity.
• The convergent new world: Bona fide group perspective in an academic convergence news organization.
• High risk projects: an examination of how personal stress is communicated within construction crews.
• Conflating rules, norms, and ethics in intercollegiate forensics.
• Removing the stained-glass ceiling: The communicative practices of the Church of the Nazarene women senior/solo pastors.
• HIV, sex, life, and death: a cluster analysis of “HIV Stops With Me” campaign.