The present study, guided by preproduction formative research principles, employed in-depth interviews and a brief survey with pediatric healthcare providers (N=15) to investigate the consistency between behavioral intention to strongly recommend the HPV vaccine, and implementation of the actual behavior. Specifically, the Integrative Model of Behavioral Prediction (IMBP) was used as a framework to examine the impact of skills and environmental constraints on that behavioral intention-behavioral performance relationship. Results suggest providers intend to strongly recommend the HPV vaccine at a high level, but actually recommend the vaccine with a slightly lesser frequency. A thematic analysis of interview transcripts yielded a list of skills (e.g., tact, cultural competence) and environmental constraints (e.g., a lack of policy or school entry requirement, limited time designated for each patient) that contribute to that consistency gap. Additionally, healthcare providers indicated several preferences on training design (e.g., Continuing Medical Education course, delivered by medical and communication professionals) that could be used to inform future message construction. Suggestions for overcoming the environmental constraints reported by providers are presented, and implications for incorporating the emergent skills and preferences into training as a novel strategy for improving provider communication about the HPV vaccine outlined.

Negative communication behaviors that occur prior to marriage often continue into marriage without proper intervention (i.e. marriage counseling). One such communication behavior is the serial argument (i.e. an argument that occurs and reoccurs over time). The topics that married couples argue about offer a unique insight to the health of one's relationship. The present study examined differences between 124 individuals, 93 who cohabited with their spouse prior to marriage and 31 who did not, in both the topics and frequency of serial arguments and overall martial satisfaction. The results indicated that there was no difference in frequency (number of topics, within each topic, overall frequency) of serial arguments between both groups. However, individuals who did not live with their spouse prior to marriage experienced lower levels of marital satisfaction when engaged in conflict regarding certain topics than did premarital cohabiters.

This thesis examines the intercultural communicative strategies and non-monogamous identity formation of polyamorous individuals. The purpose of this study is to investigate the identity management tactics that polyamorous individuals utilize to navigate a society in which monogamy is the norm. Interactions of polyamorous individuals within a monoganormative society are treated as a type of intercultural communication due to the contrasting cultural identities and communication rules. E-interviews with 38 polyamorous individuals provided basis for phone and Skype interviews. The Retrospective Interview Technique (Huston, Surra, Fitzgerald, & Cate, 1981) required interviewees to recall development of their polyamorous identity and interactions with monogamous others from the past to present day. Twenty-two interviews produced the phases of identity management, including Trial and Error, Enmeshment (Mixing Up), and Renegotiation. Analyzing interviewees' communication also produced the themes of managing stigma and impressions of the relationship identity. Implications of the study include a richer understanding of polyamorous identity management, polyamory as a relationship orientation, and a new perspective in applying identity management theory.

Honors courses offer students unique opportunities such as smaller class sizes, applied application of knowledge, and a closer mentorship with the faculty member. Through observation, there are some cases where courses have regularly been cancelled every term due to low enrollment. When these courses are often canceled, it can impact the honors program ability to continue to offer courses to the students. Using Weick's work on Sensemaking and principles of analyzing organizational culture, the study addressed how honors students are impacted by course cancellations and how they communicate about the impact. Through two focus groups with a total of eleven participants, information was gathered on how they constructed and communicated about their identity as honors students; their individual campus environments, and how those environments help to shape the communication culture they were part of; how they make scheduling decisions by extracting plausible cues from the communication they receive about course scheduling; and the impact of course cancellations on their honors experience. In defining honors and its incorporation into their identity, the students described how being in honors was a challenge to make themselves the best that they can be which included being part of an engaging community of scholars and of use to the community around. The two focus groups noted differences on how each campus provided a slightly different organizational culture: one more familiar and inviting, the other massive and resource filled, and with diversity in the type of students encountered. Course scheduling messages often were extracted from the course scheduling website, with little communication about what would be offered into the future beyond the immediate term. Students had to gather additional data from their fellow students, faculty, and the honors office. Students often searched for cues regarding time and location of the class, the impact to the degree program, and if the class will push the student in new and innovative ways to provide a deeper engagement with the material. Students were often impacted by course cancellations and the added stress of having to find replacement courses to avoid extending the time to complete the degree or risk financial repercussions with the loss of financial aid. These stressors do provide cues that can influence the degree of challenge a student is willing to accept or even degree completion.

Conflict is inevitable, but not inherently negative. All relationships face conflict with some frequency and long-term romantic partnerships are no exception. This exploratory qualitative study investigated conflict types, approaches, and affective components using digital conflict journals. Participants logged their relational conflict for one month in order to gain insight into the communication practices and conflict perceptions of couples. A conflict cycle and sensemaking framework was applied to identify patterns and best practices.

Considering the intersection of race, gender and leadership position, this study applied muted group and standpoint theory to examine communication strategies used by women in higher education leadership to cultivate influence. Using a qualitative approach, a total of 17 semi- structured interviews were collected at a large southeastern public university. The participants were women in leadership in higher education with a coordinator position or higher. A thematic analysis using open coding was conducted to answer two research questions that focused on identifying what communicative strategies women leaders in higher education activate in order to have influence and which strategies are unique to women of color. The findings indicate that practicing authentic communication is ideal. Additionally, some women of color often find themselves navigating imposer syndrome. Participant responses revealed ways in which women can leverage their position on behalf of others and the best methods to create spaces for speech. Informed by previously published research, this study bridges the gap between experiences of women of color and white women to see their communicative impact from the unified and individual stance.

The continuous occurrence of terrorist attacks in the name of Islam has shown this ideology and its tenets are at least somewhat connected to jihadists committing attacks in its name. This ideology in terms of 13 themes was investigated by the researcher in 58 sermons outlined in the tables in the appendix. These themes include: brotherhood, death, freedom, human rights, justice and equality, love, oppression, peace and treaty, self-defense, sin, submission, terrorism and truth vs. lies. The researcher used a sample of 10 sermons from U.S.- born imams and 10 sermons from foreign-born imams as the basis for the analysis for the theories and themes. Conducting a thematic analysis of U.S.-born and foreign-born imams' sermons, the researcher uncovered their true interpretations of these themes. Following this, the researcher investigated the imams' speech codes. The researcher found that imams who were born in the United States focused more on religious speech codes compared to the international imams who focused more prominently on cultural speech codes. In terms of social codes, foreign-born imams seem to be more focused on relationships, while those born in the United States focuses more on religious conduct. In terms of religious codes, foreign-born imams seem to have a checklist of requirements in how to act, including referencing believers vs. disbelievers and historical aspects of the codes, while those born in the United States focused on more codes that referred to everyday activities, people and the kind of conduct that a Muslim should have. In terms of cultural codes, foreign-born imams seem to have an immediate need to physically defend against outside forces. This is compared to the United States-born imams, who discuss how to better oneself, how cultural aspects are a distraction and how Muslim converts are more inspirational than the Muslim-born since the converts actively rejected their cultural norms in favor of Islam.

This thesis analyzes the content of United States Congresswomen's Tweets during the 2017 and 2018 Women's March on Washington (WMW). The research is based on the media framing theory. Previous literature has asserted that women in Congress place a higher priority on women's issues than other policy legislations. This study sought to determine the degree to which these assertions were true by analyzing Congresswomen's tweets during the WMW. A total of 1950 tweets from Congresswomen were collected during four days and analyzed for content and tone. Findings in this thesis invalidate that claim as the results of the investigation shows that less than twenty percent (18.8%) of the tweets posted by Democratic Congresswomen were related to the WMW and only 1% by their Republican counterparts. The rest of the tweets dealt with other issues such as their party's agenda, the opposition agenda, and issues unrelated to politics. Overall, the study found that similar to their male counterparts, United States Congresswomen place a higher priority on their legislative duties. The number of Congresswomen's tweets during that period were higher in other categories than the WMW category. Party's affiliation was found to be a factor as higher percentage of Democratic Congresswomen tweeted about the WMW than their Republican counterparts. The author concludes that Congresswomen's rhetoric is not centered primarily on women's issues as noted by prior literature. Future research is suggested to investigate data contained in Congresswomen's retweets and replies, and women's rights bills passed by Congresswomen during legislative sessions.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the social construction of women's corrective facework after experiencing gender based street harassment. A thematic analysis using open coding was used to explore, examine, and identify themes within the data. Three major themes were revealed in the data and they are 1) a resistance against a cycle of facework, 2) public spaces without accountability, and 3) disproportionate responses from men. In addition to the three themes, I will present an interpretation of Twitter as a public journal used to resist normative realities of gender based street harassment. These results are important to add to the limited research on the effects of gender based street harassment on women's lived experiences.

This study evaluated the relationship between three different dimensions of sibling abuse– verbal, physical, and sexual– and communicative social adaptability and risk-taking outcomes. A quantitative survey (N = 477) explored the frequency of such abuse among college students and self-reported risk-taking behavior, social experience, social wit, appropriate self-disclosure, social confirmation, and social composure. Moreover, participants responded to nominal prompts asking whether they ever reported their sibling abuse. Independent sample t-tests and correlation tests show that survivors of sibling trauma are moee likely to appropriately disclose socially and are more likely to report engaging in an index of various risky behaviors (e.g. heavy drinking and suicidal ideation) during their life. The three dimensions of trauma are correlated with different dimensions of communicative social adaptability and risk-taking behaviors. With regard to communicative social adaptability, experiencing verbal abuse is correlated with an increase in social confirmation, appropriate social disclosure, and social wit while physical abuse is correlated with an increase in social confirmation and social wit. These results supplement a small but extant body of literature on sibling abuse and demonstrates the need to further study maladaptive sibling dyads.