Measurement in Organizational Communication

Abstract

Organizational communication, as an area of inquiry, continues to be a robust subdiscipline in the field of communication studies. Quantitative methods and measures continue to be valued within the field and are often viewed “as a complement to the interpretive, critical, and discursive approaches” that are often utilized by organizational communication researchers. Mixed methods research is the use and integration of both quantitative and qualitative data sources to better understand a research problem. Organizational communication researchers have been combining quantitative and qualitative data sources to better understand organizational communication phenomena for decades, but the frequency of mixed methods studies has increased. Organizational communication researchers rely on much the same sampling techniques found in other communication subdisciplines. Multiple measures include the examination of communication styles and the ways individuals communicate in the workplace. The new contributions to organizational communication research open avenues for discussion regarding the assessment of both micro- and macro-level analyses.