Uncovering Hidden Media Framings in Generic Communication Competence Assessments: Is the Face-To-Face Context the Default Framing?

ABSTRACT

Dispositional communication competencies can be assessed in (a) a generic form that does not include any reference to a particular medium of interaction or in (b) a communication medium-specific version. To date, little is known about the specific media that individuals use as a reference and the weights they assign to them when responding to generic communication items – an important research gap because the use of diverse communication media has risen considerably during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on media theories, two hypotheses were derived: Generic ratings contain a “hidden” face-to-face (FtF) communication framing that is dominant in the cognitive processing (media naturalness perspective) versus media are equally weighted in the mental aggregate of respondents (adaptation perspective). According to a preregistered study plan, generic and medium-specific communication items were assessed to investigate these hypotheses (referencing FtF, videoconferencing, chat, and e-mail interaction contexts). Training (n = 200) and test (n = 389) datasets were analyzed using latent variable modeling. Results indicated that generic ratings have a strong hidden FtF framing. These hidden framings impact the predictive power of the competencies to explain communication criteria (i.e. communication satisfaction). Exploratory analyses indicated that individual differences in media experience may affect the framings.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/19312458.2023.2209833

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ Note that the term hidden framing was introduced by Schulze et al. (2021) in personality research.

² Like Dennis et al. (2008), we acknowledge that e-mail can be used with high synchronicity if desired. The capabilities should not be taken as static but as a general description for typical usage.

³ In measurement instruments that assess dispositional contextualized communication competencies, respondents are not required to indicate how they communicate in general, but rather how they communicate in general using a specific communication medium. Thus, these measures make the communication context more explicit than completely generic communication measures.

⁴ Fortunati (2005) preferred this term over FtF communication based on the argument that this term better captures the multiple sensory cues available in unmediated communication.

⁵ In accordance with the preregistration, a sensitivity dataset of n = 661 was constructed. This dataset included cases with partially missing data on the contextualized questionnaires and cases with more than two wrong answers on the careless response indicators (in addition to the training and test dataset cases). Model fits obtained with the sensitivity dataset (latent variable models) did not materially differ from those obtained with the final test dataset (n = 389). See supplemental material, section 5, for details.

⁶ If the indicators of a construct are heterogenous, the solution for the latent correlations can differ based on the reference indicator chosen. The supplemental material (section 3) includes the solutions of all specified models. The supplemental materials show that there were no substantial differences in the correlational structure between the models with different reference items.

⁷ We thank a reviewer for suggesting testing for correlation differences on a fine-grained level.

⁸ For communication satisfaction, AIC and BIC values each favored a different model. SRMR was used as an additional selection criterion (see supplemental material, section 2).

⁹ See the supplemental material for all individual results (section 6).

¹⁰ See the supplemental material (section 7 and 8) for all results of the FDR procedure.

¹¹ This analysis is based on a Research Question included in our pre-registration. For the sake of brevity, we did not introduce this Research Question in the introduction.

¹² This analysis is also based on a Research Question included in our pre-registration. For the sake of brevity, we did not introduce this Research Question in the introduction.

¹³ We thank a reviewer of the current study for suggesting examining this idea using an exploratory analysis.

¹⁴ The distributions of experience with chat and e-mail had substantial positive skewness so that relatively few individuals with limited experience with these media participated in the survey (see supplemental material, section 9, for the distributions and skew values). Therefore, we were unable to use them as grouping variables.

¹⁵ We thank an anonymous reviewer for proposing this idea.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Julian Schulze

Julian Schulze is a former research associate at Freie Universität Berlin. His research focus is on the effects of telework and the competencies needed for virtual teamwork as well as on personality and communication trait assessment.

Nomi Reznik

Nomi Reznik is a researcher at Freie Universität Berlin. Her areas of research focus on personnel selection, situation perception, and psychometrics.

Stefan Krumm

Stefan Krumm is professor of psychological assessment, differential and personality psychology at Freie Universität Berlin. His research focus is on the functional principles of Situational Judgment Tests, technology-based collaboration, and psychological diagnostics broadly.

Ana Akhrakhadze

Ana Akhrakhadze is a former student at Freie Universität Berlin.

Stephen G. West

Stephen G. West is professor of psychology at Arizona State University. He is past editor of Psychological Methods, Multivariate Behavioral Research, and the Journal of Personality. His methodological work is in causal inference, experimental and quasi-experimental research designs, multiple regression, structural equation modeling, and longitudinal data analysis. His substantive research is in the areas of personality and in prevention-related issues in health, mental health, and education.