Research Methods Quantitative Project

APA Notation
Donovan, L. A., & MacIntyre, P. D. (2004). Age and sex differences in willingness to communicate, communication apprehension, and self-perceived competence. Communication Research Reports, 21(4), 420-427.

Literature Review The variable selected for this research project was willingness to communicate, a popular variable among communication research. Willingness to communicate is studied to further explore why and when humans choose to communicate or not to communicate with each other. Once this is discovered we can evaluate and learn to address each instant of varying willingness to communicate. This continues to appear in studies based on the heuristic nature of past studies dealing with willingness to communicate, humans and communication will always change and research continues to find more information on willingness to communicate. In this study, willingness to communicate is defined as “…the probability that an individual will choose to communicate, specifically to talk, when free to do so” (McCroskey & Baer, 1985, 420). Meaning, willingness to communicate is ones personal level of communication in various situations, when that person is given the opportunity. Past findings have agreed that “willingness to communicate is the one, overwhelming communication personality construct which permeates every facet of an individual’s life and contributes significantly to the social, educational, and organizational achievements of the individual” (Richmond and Roach, 1992, 104), this shows the importance of willingness to communicate to research and further findings. Previous research notes that, despite stereotypes of women as being talkative, adult men talk more in meetings, in the classroom, and in mixed-group discussions than do adult woman (Tannen,1990). These findings lead this study to look as the deeper differences between men and women and their willingness to communicate. Researchers also noticed that these roles were reversed at younger ages and that young girls communicated more than boys (MacIntyre, Baker, Clement, and Donovan, 2002). This finding added to the questions about varying willingness to communicate, and how is changes with age as well as gender. All the previous research about willingness to communicate has lead to this study on age and sex differences in willingness to communicate, communication apprehension and self-perceived competence. Communication apprehension and self-perceived competence are the two key antecedents found by MacIntyre.
Purpose of Study The purpose of this study was to “examine sex and age differences in willingness to communicate, communication apprehension, and perceived competence in the relations among them” (Donovan & MacIntyre, 2004, 421). The age groups were divided into junior high, high school, and university ages for both men and women. There were three directional hypothesis listed and two non-directional research questions.
Participants
The participants in this study were from a convince sample of students enrolled in various courses from French immersion to psychology all ranging in ages and school rank. There were 741 participants in the ranges of junior high, high school and university students between the ages of 11 to 47. The study was done on information gather from a previous study by MacIntyre which is why all the students where involved in some type of French course at the time of the study. The 741 participants were divided in to 90 males and 177 females at the junior high level, 85 males and 106 females at the high school level, and 68 males and 215 females at the university level.
Methodology
This study was an Ex Post Facto experiment since the participants were divided by predestined variations of age and sex. The independent variables involved are age and sex which are divided into junior high, high school, and university age levels and male and female sex. The dependent variables involved were willingness to communicate, communication apprehension, and self-perceived competence. The experiment is a factorial design because of the two independent variables being studied. The statistical test MANOVA was used in this experiment to test the three hypotheses.
Operationalizations
The independent variables were operationalized in a demographic portion of a survey, and the dependent variables were operationalized in three surveys using semantic scales about willingness to communicate, communication apprehension, and self-perceived competence. The surveys were given to all students in their classroom during normal class hours except one group of junior high students who participated in the gymnasium of the school because of requests from administration. The surveys used were willingness to communicate scale with 20 items ( MacIntyre & Baer, 1985), self-perceived competence scale with 12 items (McCroskey & McCroskey, 1988) and communication apprehension scale with 12 items (McCroskey, Richmond & McCroskey, 1987). All scales asked students to rank items from 0-100%.
Discussion
The research hypotheses were only partially supported in all three of the hypotheses. “Females show higher WTC [Willingness to communicate] than males among the junior high students and the predicted differences in WTC occur for males and females (see HI), but not to such a degree as to produce significant sex differences in WTC past the junior high level in our samples.” (Donovan & MacIntyre, 2004, 425). This just shows that the hypothesis is correct in that female willingness to communicate differs from males and that it will decrease as females grow older, how even it is not significant enough of a difference to fully support the hypothesis. “No sex differences in communication apprehension or self-perceived competence are evident between the junior high and high school students, but the female university students show higher communication apprehension and lower self-perceived competence than their male counterparts.” (Donovan & MacIntyre, 2004, 425). Similarly these results showed that the hypothesis was on track however not all there age groups show significant differences like they hypothesized. So even though the study showed a slight difference there was not enough support to produce gripping results. Every study has limitations involved as well as error, in this study some of them were type of student sampled (all French students), as well as the ages ending at a university level. On top of that the grouping of ages could've been more clear with less over lap. Future research can look deeper into communication apprehension and self-perceived competence and how they affect each other. Also future research could look deeper into the communication apprehension levels among university age females and potentially if professors need to address this problem of decreasing willingness to communicate. Future researchers could also change the study to a longitudinal study to examine the same group of students over time and how each individual may change.
Critique
I thought that this article was very interesting and raised some interesting questions as well. However as previously stated there are some clear limitations, like the all french student pool for participants, as well as the age overlap. I also thought the major difference in amounts of females versus males was a bit too high in all three age sections. The article seemed to cover a lot of aspects of communication but didn’t seem to find much where it seemed like there was something to discover, so I think with changes researchers may be able to uncover more clear results. I would recommend this article to my mother who is a teacher at the high school level, while no differences were found at this level it does show how males and females change over time and it is interesting to see how their willingness to communicate flips over time. The main idea of the study was very strong and I think with minor changes to the sample it would produce clearer results.