Introducing Communication Research

Donald Treadwell earned his master’s degree in communication from Cornell University and his PhD in communication and rhetoric from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He developed and taught communication research classes in classroom and online settings and also taught courses in organizational communication, public relations, and public relations writing. He is the coauthor of Public Relations Writing: Principles in Practice (2nd ed., Sage, 2005). He has published and presented research on organizational image, consumer response to college names, health professionals’ images of AIDS, faculty perceptions of the communication discipline, and employers’ expectations of newly hired communication graduates. His research appears in Communication Monographs, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Public Relations Review, Journal of Human Subjectivity, and Criminal Justice Ethics. He is professor emeritus, Westfield State University, and has international consulting experience in agricultural extension and health communication.  

Chapter 1: Foundations: The Ideas That Shape Our Research
Chapter 2: Getting Started: From Inspiration to Implementation
Chapter 3: Ethics: Our Responsibilities as Researchers
Chapter 4: Resources: Reading, Recording, and Reviewing Research
Chapter 5: Measurement: Research Using Numbers
Chapter 6: Sampling: Who, What, and How Many?
Chapter 7: Statistics: Choosing and Using Quantitative Tools
Chapter 8: Surveys: Putting Numbers on Opinions
Chapter 9: Experiments: Researching Cause and Effect
Chapter 10: Content Analysis I: Quantitative Understanding of Words and Images
Chapter 11: Content Analysis II: Qualitative Understandings of Words and Images
Chapter 12: Observation: Qualitative Understandings of Behaviors and Attitudes
Chapter 13: Now What? Reporting and Presenting Research Results