Communication apprehension in Japan: Grade school through secondary school

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to examine levels of reported communication apprehension in Japanese elementary and secondary school students and to compare them to normative levels of apprehension in American children and adolescents. The Personal Report of Communication Fear (McCroskey, Andersen, Richmond, & Wheeless, 1981) was administered to 1446 students from six elementary, junior, and high schools in Japan. McCroskey et al. (1981) reported the PRCF to be unidimensional but in the present study three factors emerged: classroom communication fear (CCF), general communication fear (GCF), and stranger communication fear (SCF). The subscale scores were used in subsequent analyses. The major findings were: (a) communication apprehension levels increase fairly steadily from kindergarten through the senior year in high school, particularly for the classroom communication fear (CCF) subscale of the PRCF; and (b) there were minimal differences between Japanese and American students in grades K-12 on the PRCF using the normative means established by McCroskey et al. (1981).