SOME POSSIBLE MEASUREMENT INSTRUMENTS
Copies of the following instruments are available in: Rubin, R. B., Palmgreen, P., & Sypher, H.
E. (1994). Communication research measures: A sourcebook. New York: Guilford Press.
Affective Learning: Students' affect toward learning
Affinity Seeking Instrument: Measures the active social-communicative process by which
individuals attempt to get others to like and feel positive toward them.
Argumentativeness Scale: Measures the tendency to approach arguments versus the tendency to
avoid arguments. Argumentativeness predisposes people to advocate positions on controversial
issues and to attack verbally the positions that the other people take on these issues.
Attributional Confidence Scale: Measures the degree of confidence we have in the predictions
we make about others.
Audience Activity Measures: Measures that assess the goal-directed and voluntaristic nature of
media use. Audience activity is multidimensions, consisting of several qualitative dimensions
that include: (a) Selectivity, or choice of communication settings or partners; (b) Intentionality,
or purposive desire to seek out a communication setting; (c) Attention, or focus on a message;
and (d) Involvement, or cognitive, affective, or behavioral responses to the communication.
Behavior Alteration Techniques: Measures the power resources available to teachers in their
attempts to influence students.
Communication Anxiety Inventory: Trait and state measures of person's predispositions to
experience anxiety in communicating with others.
Communication Satisfaction Questionnaire: Measures the overall degree of satisfaction an
employee perceives in his/her total communication environment.
Communicative Adaptability Scale: Measures the cognitive and behavioral ability to perceive
socio-interpersonal relationships and adapt one's interaction goals and behaviors accordingly.
Communicative Competence Scale: Measures the ability to choose among available
communication behaviors to accomplish one's own interpersonal goals during an encounter while
maintaining the face and line of fellow interactants within the constraints of the situation.
Communicator Competence Questionnaire: Assesses the interaction between persons
occupying specific roles within organizational settings. Measures two factors (encoding and
decoding) and is other-oriented and designed to assess either superior or subordinate
communicative competence.
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Communicator Style Measure: Measures the way one verbally and paraverbally interacts to
signal how literal meaning should be taken, interpreted, filtered, or understood. Consists of nine
independent variables (dominant, dramatic, contentious, animated, impression leaving, relaxed,
attentive, open, and friendly) and one dependent variable (communicator image).
Compliance-Gaining Techniques: Focuses on choices people make about what to say when
trying to persuade others to behave in predetermined ways.
Conversational Appropriateness/Effectiveness Scales: Measures two components of
interpersonal communication competence: appropriate behavior, that which received social
rewards and fulfills others' expectations; and effective behavior, that which accomplishes its
goal.
Cultivation Index: Examines people's social-reality beliefs, presumably formed from TV
viewing. The Cultivation Index gives respondents two choices in questions, one being the
"television answer" (based on television portrayals), and the other representing how things are in
the "real world." Heavy TV viewers are expected to choose the television answer more than are
light TV viewers.
Family Communication Patterns Scale: Measures two general dimensions that describe family
communication patterns: (1) Socio-Oriented Family Communication stresses maintenance of
harmonious interpersonal relations; and (2) Concept-Oriented Family Communication values
open, controversial discussion.
Feelings of Understanding/Misunderstanding Scale: Measures a communicator's assessment
of his/her success or failure when attempting to communicate with another person.
Generalized Immediacy Scale: Measures those behaviors that reduce physical or psychological
distance between people.
Gratifications Sought and Obtained Scales: Measures gratifications sought from media,
motives for media exposure based on expectations about media content, and gratifications
obtained, the perceived personal outcomes obtained from media exposure.
Group Behavior Inventory: Measures the impact of organizational interventions on
interpersonal processes within work groups.
Individualized Trust Scale: Assesses the process of holding certain relevant, favorable
perceptions of another person that engender certain types of dependent behaviors in a risky
situation where the expected outcomes that are dependent upon that other person(s) are not
known with certainty.
Interaction Involvement Scale: Measures the degree to which people are engaged, cognitively
and behaviorally, in their conversations with others.
International Communication Association Audit: A package of instruments used in the
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assessment of employees' perceptions of communication processes in their organization.
Interpersonal Attraction Scale: Measures three dimensions of interpersonal attraction: (a) a
liking or social dimension; (b) a task or respect dimension; and (c) a physical dimension.
Interpersonal Communication Motives Scale: Assesses the reasons or motives individuals
have for communicating with others.
Interpersonal Solidarity Scale: Measures the feeling of closeness between people that develops
as a result of shared sentiments, similarities, and intimate behaviors.
Mean World Index: Measures perceptions of mistrust and alienation, presumably caused by
television viewing. The MWI considers whether people can be trusted, are fair, and are altruistic.
Mentoring and Communication Support Scale: This instrument measuring perceptions of
mentoring, which is a communication support system designed to enhance both the individual's
and the organization's success.
News Credibility Scale: Measures the extent to which people feel media news coverage is
accurate and truthful on three dimensions: reliable-logical, showmanship, and trustworthiness.
Nonverbal Immediacy Behaviors Instrument: Assesses students' perceptions of a teacher's
physical or psychological closeness by identifying nonverbal behaviors of approach-avoidance
(e.g., eye contact, proximity, gestures, open-body position, and movement)
Organizational Communication Conflict Instrument: Assesses choices about strategies in the
management of conflict across organizational contexts.
Organizational Communication Development Audit Questionnaire: Assesses the
communication climate in organizations, to give a rough measure of communication and job
satisfaction, and to give an indication about possible bottlenecks in organizational
communication.
Organizational Communication Scale: Measures 16 dimensions of communication variables in
organizations.
Organizational Culture Survey: Measures the rules, assumptions, beliefs, symbols, rituals,
myths, and values that a group has invented, discovered or developed to cope with its problems
of external adaptation and internal integration, and that have worked well enough to be
considered valid and therefore to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think,
and feel in relation to those problems.
Organizational Identification Scale: Measures the active process by which individuals link
themselves with an organization.
Parasocial Interaction Scale: Assesses the relationship or intimacy by a media consumer with a
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remote media "persona" with respect to elements of empathy, perceived similarity, and physical
attraction.
Perceived Homophily Measure: Measures the degree to which interactants are similar to one
another.
Perceived Realism Scale: Measures perceptions of TV's realism as defined either by the
accuracy (i.e., true-to-life depiction) of the message or as an attitude influenced by individual
characteristics of receivers. Perceived realism is typically treated as a moderator or mediator of
TV behaviors and effects.
Personal Involvement Inventory: Measures the arousal, interest, and motivation of people in
the products they purchase. It is typically treated as a mediating variable in assessing whether a
message such as an advertisement is relevant to the consumer.
Personal Report of Communication Apprehension: Measures person's trait or dispositional
anxieties about communicating.
Political Media Gratifications Scale: Measures 11 different reasons for watching and 9 for
avoiding political broadcasts.
Quality Marriage Index: Measures an individual's evaluation of the "goodness of the
relationship gestalt."
Receiver Apprehension Scale: Measures a learned, trait-like disposition of anxiety or fear about
listening. Specifically, receiver apprehension refers to "the fear of misinterpreting, inadequately
processing, and/or not being able to adjust psychologically to messages sent by others."
Relational Communication Scale: Measures the verbal and nonverbal themes present in
people's communication that defines an interpersonal relationship. Measures 12 relational
dimensions: Dominance-Submission, Intimacy, Affection-Hostility, Intensity of Involvement,
Inclusion-Exclusion, Trust, Depth-Superficiality, Emotional Arousal, Composure, Similarity,
Formality, and Task-Social Orientation.
Relational Dimensions Scale: Measures 8 different relational variables and then divides
relationships into three types: Independents, who thrive on uncertainty, autonomy, and change
and are opposed to traditional values; Separates, who are socially constrained and separate from
their partner yet not independent or autonomous; and Traditionals, who engage in a high degree
of sharing and are most comfortable with temporal regularity.
Revised Self-Disclosure Scale: Measures the messages about the self that a person
communicates to another.
Source Credibility Scale—Berlo: Measures the believability of sources of information.
Source Credibility Scale—McCroskey: Measures people's perceptions of the credibility of
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speakers.
Speakers' Perceptions of Situational Causes of Anxiety: Measures seven situational factors
that can give rise to communication apprehension during public speaking performances: novelty,
formality, subordinate status, conspicuousness, unfamiliarity, dissimilarity, and degree of
attention.
Student Motivation Scale: Measures the extent to which students direct high levels of
concentration and attention toward the competent completion of their educational tasks.
Student Resistance Strategies: Assesses the variety of strategies that college students might use
in resisting teachers' persuasive messages.
Teacher Credibility: Measures students' attitudes toward or evaluation of the competence of
their teachers.
Teacher Satisfaction Scale: Measures teachers' attitudes or affect toward their primary job
responsibility, teaching.
Teacher Self-Disclosure Scale: Measures teacher statements in the classroom about self that
may or may not be related to subject content, but reveal information about the teacher that
students are unlikely to learn from other sources.
Team-Review Questionnaire: Measures the effectiveness of team work in organizations.
Television Affinity Scale: Measures the intensity of one's attachment to television.
Television Viewing Motives Scale: Assesses the reasons why (uses and gratifications) children
watch television.
Three-Dimensional Communication Load Scale: Measures the amount of information that is
processed by managers in organizations.
Unwillingness-to-communication Scale: Measures a predisposition or chronic tendency to
avoid and/or devalue oral communication.
Verbal Aggressiveness Scale: Measures a personality trait that predisposes persons to attack the
self-concepts of other people instead of, or in addition to, their positions on topics of
communication.
Verbal Immediacy Behaviors: Measures the extent to which people use verbal behaviors to
achieve physical and psychological closeness with another.