An exegesis is defined as “the critical explanation or analysis of a text” (American Heritage Dictionary, online). Students will locate a research article from a communication journal that corresponds to information addressed in this class, and write a 4 – 5 page analysis of the article. You should use the RRCC Library databases, such as Academic Search Premiere, to locate an article. Be sure to download and print the article and save it so that you can submit the article with your paper.
Each paper should include:
• APA bibliographic citation
• Purpose of the Article
• Hypothesis and/or research question(s)
• Methodology
• Results
• Author’s conclusion
• Personal discussion and opinion
Each section must be labeled (see Sample Exegesis below). Your paper may not exceed five (5) typed, double spaced pages. You should use 12-point font [Arial or Times New Roman] and one-inch margins. You must submit both the paper AND the article you analyzed on the due date. Points will be awarded based on your analysis and comprehension of the article: I can read the article, tell me what it means and relate your findings to course concepts and theories. Ten-points (-10) will be automatically deducted if the article analyzed is not from a communication journal. If in doubt about your chosen article/journal, ask questions! If you want to be safe on your article, go to the RRCC Library database, Communication and Mass Media Complete.
COM 220
Exegesis Paper
Content Score
APA Citation /10
Purpose /10
Hypotheses/Research Questions /10
Methodology /15
Results /15
Author(s) Conclusion /15
Personal evaluation and discussion /15
Article is from an appropriate journal /5
Paper adheres to assignment format /5
Total Score /100
(Sample Exegesis)
APA Citation
Wang, M. and Brice, T. S. (1998). The effects of conscientiousness and opportunity to caucus
on group performance. Small Group Research, 48(2), 84-99.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to test the effects of ethical communication on groups when members have the opportunity to break-out and talk freely.
Hypothesis
H1: For high-conscientious groups, those given the opportunity to caucus should perform at higher levels than those without the opportunity to caucus.
H2: For low-conscientious groups, those given the opportunity to caucus will respond with a similar or even lower effort level than those without the opportunity to caucus.
RQ1: What, if any, are the similarities between the groups?
Methodology
This study examined how group discussion effected the productivity of both high-conscientious and low-conscientious work groups, in that some groups were allowed to caucus and others were not given the opportunity to discuss group policies and establish norms. One hundred and twenty students from a metropolitan mid-western university participated, in partial fulfillment of an introductory psychology course requirement. Half of the participants were female. Initially the Goldberg (1992) 100 Adjective Checklist was administered to 670 students to determine their conscientiousness, since 20 of the questions on this checklist pertained to this. From the results, only those who had a very high or low level of conscientiousness were chosen for the study. Participants were then placed in mixed gender groups of three, all high- or low-conscientious, with the exception of four groups which were all either female or male, but were still all high- or low- personality types. The groups were then given the task of developing new products/uses for three ordinary items— a knife, a plastic trash bag and a brick. Participants were told to work a group in order to generate as many uses as possible in 5 minutes.
At the end of five minutes, some groups were allowed to caucus on group progress, while others were given tasks for each individual member of the group to perform during their break. After the break time, the groups returned to work on the next object, with three work periods in all. Upon completion of the experiment, individual participants were given a questionnaire that asked about group procedures, like “my group developed strategies for generating alternate uses for the task [item]”. The students were asked to rate each statement on a Likert scale of 1=strongly disagree to 7=strongly agree in order to determine the effectiveness of the manipulation check and norm development measures.
Results
As was expected, a significant difference was discovered between groups that had the opportunity to caucus on group performance and those who did not. It was proven that there is a major link between group conscientiousness and the opportunity to caucus, but which produced differing results between the high- and low- groups. The caucus condition had a significant positive impact on performance for the low-conscientious groups and a significant negative impact for the high-conscientious groups. Since these findings were unexpected, performance quality was examined. Regardless of the opportunity to caucus, high-conscientious groups produced more practical uses than low-conscientious groups. Additionally, high-conscientious groups concentrated on quality at the expense of quantity, whereas low-conscientious groups did the opposite. The researchers concluded that the opportunity to caucus led the low- groups to form group norms of performance quantity and the high- groups to form norms of quality. Overall, the low- groups out-performed the high-conscientious groups in that they were willing to take more risks in the production process— it was found that high-conscientious group members were inhibiting each other’s and their own performance as a result of the caucus time.
Conclusion
(Briefly summarize the discussion section, and author’s conclusion in this portion.)
Discussion (Personal Opinion)
I found this article to be very interesting, though I question the researchers choice of using students for the experiment, especially since they were to receive credit for their mandatory participation. As I expected, the high-conscientious groups did not perform as well as the low-conscientious groups because of personality traits that forced both types to operate in an almost leaderless environment. Given this, the low- groups were more productive because they were willing to take chances with their production, hence, not afraid of failure. The high- groups exhibited the traits of over-achievers in that they wanted their work to be perfect, hence creating fewer but better products. Little was mentioned about the performance of the same-sex groups, which leads me to wonder if their actions were similar to those of other groups or if they were better/worse. There is a definite link between conscientiousness of individuals and the way a group performs. For example, when in discussion groups for this class, those groups comprised of a mix of high- and low- types tend to display those traits as the low- types rarely speak, thus allowing the high- types to dominate the discussion. This is not to say that low- types do not do as much work as high- types, but more that they tend to be introverts while the high- types are extroverts. To this end, I believe that it is important to have a mix of personality types so that work groups can experience both styles of production, then can modify them to fit group needs.