A study was conducted to describe male and female participation and success in both debate and individual events national competition and to identify areas of gender-based inequity. Data from three 1984 national tournaments (National Debate Tournament, American Forensic Association's National Individual Events Tournament, and the National Forensic…

Describes a study comparing public attitudes with attitudes of public relations practitioners and measuring accuracy of practitioners' predictions of public attitudes. Provides limited support for the thesis that PR pros can perceive and predict public attitude with modest accuracy. (MS)

Semantic differential statements were used to elicit attitudes toward aging from 176 high school students, college students, and older adults (nonstudents) who had viewed four sketches of a white male's appearance at ages 12, 19, 49, and 70 years. The results were the following: (1) High school students described aging as more personally…

A study explored the universality of widely accepted descriptors of the ideal speaking voice in cross-gender and cross-cultural perspective. To construct and contrast the ideal voice types, university students from Mexico and Arizona described the ideal voice type under consideration and completed a semantic differential indicating the collective…

A study examined the role of the mass media in the development of people's conceptions about a neo-Nazi march planned for Skokie, Illinois, in 1978. The purpose of the study was to determine whether or not and in what respects different types of people had developed common conceptions about the event and what role the mass media played in that…

This "communication lexicon," a new source of information in the field of language and area studies, describes how selected themes such as family, society, work, and entertainment are perceived and understood by members of the Mexican, Colombian, and United States cultures. It identifies broad trends of perceptions and evaluations…