This study examined the impact of gender, institutional characteristics, years of professional experience in higher education, and highest earned degree on perceptions of career advancement factors held by midlevel Black female and male student affairs administrators. Midlevel Black female student affairs administrators were more likely than their Black male counterparts to perceive disparities related to career advancement factors. They perceived elevated professional standards, gender discrimination, underutilization of their skills, and negative societal attitudes regarding Black women. Although women were more likely to perceive disparities in career advancement factors, women at medium institutions were less likely than men at medium institutions to perceive that they are subjected to negative societal attitudes about Black people of their gender group. When gender was removed from the analysis, all administrators at medium institutions were more likely than their counterparts at small institutions to perceive that they are included in decision-making processes. Additional findings beyond the scope of the original research questions indicate that years of experience and highest earned degree also impact the career advancement perceptions held by all of the participants in this study. The sample population for this study were members of College Student Educators International (ACPA), the National Association of Student Affairs Professionals (NASAP), and the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA). Data was collected using an electronic version of the "Perceptions of Career Advancement Survey" adapted from Coleman's (2002) "African American Student Affairs Administrator Survey". / A Dissertation Submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education. / Fall Semester, 2006. / September 21, 2006. / Black Women Student Affairs Administrators, African American Women Student Affairs Administrat, African American Student Affairs Administrators, Black Student Affairs Administrators / Includes bibliographical references. / Robert A. Schwartz, Professor Directing Dissertation; Maxine D. Jones, Outside Committee Member; Beverly L. Bower, Committee Member; Victoria-Maria MacDonald, Committee Member.

The study attempted to investigate the element of self-disclosure in the everyday communication transaction. More specifically, it sought to determine: (1) What is self-disclosure and how has it been defined? (2) What are the intrapersonal variables affecting the process? (3) What barriers hinder the interpersonal process of self-disclosure? (4) What, in fact, is appropriate self-disclosure within the interpersonal transaction? and (5) How can self-disclosure be facilitated to enhance the interpersonal process of communication?Although numerous theorists have attempted to define the process, the definitions have been inconsistent and somewhat vague. The study suggested that self-disclosure is not realistic in the everyday communication transaction, and attempted to illustrate how communication could be enhanced through a modified approach to self-disclosure. This approach included the utilization of a supportive climate and the giving and receiving of constructive feedback. The modified approach was illustrated through the use of the Johari Window.Further research was suggested to determine the effects of interpersonal trust and the effects of attitudes on the self-disclosing process.

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South Africans have had a passionate affair with cellular telephony since its launch in June 1994. But, by far the networks contract-less prepaid service has been an outstanding success, attracting hundreds of thousands of users who could not have otherwise been part of the subscriber base. The prepaid service has made cellular telephony accessible to all, especially the youth/student market. The author investigated the reasons into why students at Cape Technikon chose the prepaid service over the contract service and whether student allowance/ income affected the choice exercised. The prepaid system was voted as being most popular. Income levels had a direct bearing on the choice that students made but other factors such as perception, culture and socio-economic play a role in shaping the choices made. The most important factor to students was that no monthly bills were involved and total control over spending could be exercised. Recommendations to the cellular operators included, projecting a brand personality that attracted the youth and embracing the challenge of building long- term relationships with these customers. / Thesis (M.B.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2003.

This thesis has examined the effects of socioeconomic status and linguistic development upon responses to Dwight Dean's Alienation Scale - an accepted social science research instrument.No significant correlations were found to exist between socioeconomic status and linguistic development and/or responses to the scale.A significant negative correlation was found to exist between linguistic development and responses to two out of three revised alienation subscales derived from the Dear, Scale.The thesis suggests that researchers must be wary of accepting current and future research instruments merely on the basis of reliability data. It also suggests that researchers must seek further understanding of the relationship between linguistic development and responses to social science research instruments.

This dissertation examines coercion in its relationship to persuasion and conflict resolution and prevention. Building on the analysis of coercion by Alan Wertheimer, this dissertation offers a new conceptualization of coercion as a communication phenomenon and examines how existing conceptualizations of coercion may be shaping both the discourse on international conflict and practical approaches to its resolution. It also offers a discussion of several key implications of the revised conceptualization of coercion for the theory and practice of conflict resolution and prevention and outlines second-order changes necessary for the creation of a workable conflict prevention protocol capable of averting deadly conflict. The theory of conflict provention by John Burton serves as a starting point for the analysis of the theory and practice of conflict resolution and prevention. The author argues that coercion is a bona fide mode of communication, closely related to persuasion. Contrary to the assumption underlying other analyses, coercion is not a single conceptual entity. Rather, the term has at least two distinct meanings, coded in the dissertation as moralized and sociological. The chief factor that defines coercion within the framework of sociological discourse is the source of punishment threatened by the sender. Within the framework of moralized (ordinary language) discourse, the key factor that separates coercion from other modes of influence is the legitimacy of the threat. Freedom of choice and rationality do not separate persuasion from coercion. Building on the analysis of coercion in part 2 of the dissertation, part 3 offers an examination of the current state of the theory and practice of conflict resolution and prevention through the lens of Applied Behavioral Analysis and Performance Management. The author challenges several dominant assumptions about conflict, such as the assumption that negotiation, mediation, or problem solving are always the best means of resolving deadly conflicts. He concludes that the exclusion of legitimate coercion from the arsenal of conflict resolution and prevention is at the root of the systemic failure to end deadly conflict. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2004. / November 1, 2004. / Conflict Resolution, Conflict Prevention, Conflict, Communication, Persuasion, Coercion / Includes bibliographical references. / Marilyn Young, Professor Directing Dissertation; Maria Morales, Outside Committee Member; Stephen McDowell, Committee Member; Jay Rayburn, Committee Member.

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Surprisingly enough, while it is generally acknowledged that emotion plays a vital part in the negotiation of every day life, there has been until recently a scarcity of communications scholarship directly concerned with its study. To date, those examining this variable have largely relied for the theoretical and methodological support on models imported from psychology. While their studies have arguably had a positive impact on our understanding of some aspects of emotion, this dissertation contends that an over-dependence on psychological theories and methods has resulted in a blinkered approach to its study. In general, the focus of research and scholarship has been on either display and recognition of facial expression, physiological response to environmental stimuli, subjective verbal labeling, and behavioral manifestation. On closer inspection, a positivist discourse which considers emotion in methodologically individualistic and empirically behavioral terms has informed much of this work. Building on behaviorism, intentionalist analytical philosophy, and phenomenology, emotion research in Communication Studies has tended to neglect the social. More sophisticated approaches to grasping this latter variable, found in Sociology and Anthropology, consequently have had little impact, leading communications scholars to consistently define emotion in terms of individual motivations, drives, desires, wants, and dispositions rather than as a process located in a social world. / In light of this, this dissertation strove not only to assemble a history and provide a critique of emotion study in psychology, but to relate it to advances being made in Sociology and Anthropology, especially those pertaining to communication and postmodernity. Alongside this, it endeavored to: (1) furnish a theory and methodology for explaining those relationships; (2) illuminate a way in which emotion can be reconceived as a formative and independent social variable integral to the reproduction of postmodernity; and (3) analyze the practices and discourses that have contributed to the historically changing, oftentimes, inconsistent and disputed, study of emotion. After the principle issues were introduced in the opening Chapter, the second Chapter outlined the relationships between emotion, the everyday, media, and postmodernity, with the everyday representing a key theoretical construct necessary for understanding our time. This Chapter closed with an exploration of so-called postmodern emotion. Using several theoretical frameworks, Chapter 3 tracked historical, discursive, and disciplinary interests in emotion and Chapter 4 relations between theories of emotions through pre-modern (5thC B.C.-1890), modern (1890-1960), and postmodern (1960-) periods. Next, Chapter 5 charted the etymologies of the primary emotion terms, while Chapter 6 explored approaches to the study of emotion in Communication Studies, or Communicology. After an initial analysis of 'bibliometric' data, the three primary traditional approaches were then systematically identified and examined. A fourth postmodern approach, the constructionist, was presented and assessed in the last Chapter. There it was argued that, from this perspective, communication constitutes reality and not merely provides a conduit for preformed intentional and emotional states. There, the concept of social emotion was advanced, the idea of emotion as socio-culture performance developed, and a rules based theoretical f