Limitations of Research

Addressing the Peer Reviewers

Communication research reports can be submitted for presentation at an academic conference and for publication in a peer-reviewed academic journal. The discipline of communication studies is home to several professional associations that sponsor yearly conferences in the United States and throughout the world. These conferences, such as those of the Eastern Communication Association, the National Communication Association, or the Southern States Communication Association, provide communication researchers the opportunity to present their research studies and to get feedback from listeners and other conference participants. Communication studies is also home to several peer-reviewed academic journals (e.g., Communication Research, Journal of Communication, New Media and Society). These academic journals can be found online and in print. Some of these academic journals are sponsored by specific professional associations. For example, the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication is sponsored by the International Communication Association. These journals usually publish several issues every year with each issue containing multiple research reports.

Before the communication research report can be accepted for presentation at an academic conference or publication in an academic journal, it has to undergo a rigorous peer-review process. Peer review happens when two or more subject experts conduct a blind review and evaluation of a research report. Blind review refers to the researchers being kept unaware of the reviewers’ identities and the reviewers being kept “blind” as to the researchers’ identities. For conference papers, reviewers usually recommend either “accept” or “reject” and provide written feedback to the researchers. A leader for the division of the professional association to which the paper was submitted (e.g., Communication Technology, Interpersonal Communication, Organizational Communication) then communicates a final “accept” or “reject” decision to the researchers. For academic journals, reviewers usually recommend either “accept,” “revise and resubmit,” or “reject” and also provide detailed written feedback. The journal’s editor, upon considering these reviews, then communicates a final decision to the researchers.

In the “Limitations of Research” section, communication researchers have the opportunity to write about the major problems of the research study. This not only gives the researchers the opportunity to demonstrate to peer reviewers their awareness of the study’s problems, but it also allows them to write about how they addressed the problems of the particular study. For example, a team of undergraduate researchers conducted a study comparing college students’ levels of public speaking anxiety in the traditional public speaking class with public speaking anxiety in an online public speaking class that included video conferencing tools such as Skype. The researchers administered the same previously developed five-item measure of public speaking anxiety for students taking the traditional public speaking class and for those taking the online public speaking class. Unfortunately, while analyzing the data collected for their study, the researchers discovered the public speaking anxiety measure produced a low reliability score for students taking the online public speaking class. This is a problem because it indicates the items of the measure were not consistently measuring public speaking anxiety for students in the online class. The researchers then took a closer look at the items of the public speaking anxiety measure only to realize that two of the five items were relevant to speaking situations in a traditional classroom (e.g., “I experience considerable anxiety while standing in the room just before my speech starts”). After dropping these items from the computation of the measure’s reliability score, the researchers arrived at a more acceptable reliability score for the measure of public speaking anxiety completed by students taking the online class. The “Limitations of Research” section gives the researchers the opportunity to discuss this type of problem (e.g., low reliability score for a measure) and how they overcame it.

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