Research and Evidence

There are various methods to obtaining research in Communications. Abstractly, some involve careful analysis of spoken word, while others focus on physical or symbol based communication. Established theories are typically at the genesis of communicative research, often serving as a guiding force in the research measures decision-making process. There are a number of ways to examine differing communicative environments. Some researchers in the field consider different communicative environments as subcultures, to be studied independent of one-another, with the intention of revealing and evaluating communicative deficiencies and or differences across groups. While others assess unrelated communicative environments collectively, hoping to discover shared communicative patterns within different cultures. As the field of Communications is largely centered on human interaction and behavior, the most common and effective research procedures lie in the ability to observe. In Communications, successful research stems from observing information in real-time human interaction or in documents/audio recordings of conversations, and discovering its connection to relevant theories or models.

Evidence in Communications is unique in that it is situational; it shifts depending on what the source of analysis is in a communicative interaction. One claim does not necessarily hold true viewed through different theories, across different interactions. A communicative situation must be viewed from many different angles, in order to reveal evidence. For example, in conducting a study on family communication, evidence or apparent truths would not remain constant. Evidence would vary depending on what aspect of family communication was focused on, and what information was considered as the family communication was evaluated. “Although perceptions of emotions, attitudes, cognitions, and behaviors are important and valid information to gather, we would benefit from additional indexes that assess the frequency and types of behavioral aspects of family communication as we continue to validate knowledge claims generated from our research” (p.9 Graham).