Profiling Year Level and Gender Differences in Adolescent Communication Styles

Abstract

The communication style of adolescents was assessed using the factors of the Focus of Communication Questionnaire (FOCQ), gender and year level. The FOCQ has six factors that individuals focus on during conflict including success, task, other-person, concession, withdrawing, and confusing. Data from the 460 adolescent participants showed that there were interaction effects involving success and other-person focused communication. Younger students were lower on concession, task, and confusion focused communication. Females were more withdrawing, concession and less confusion focused than males. The magnitude of the effect sizes resulting from the gender and year level analyses was small. Profile analysis of the six communication factors resulted in two clusters similar to those from previous research. The third cluster comprised a group of students low in all six communication factors. The discussion addresses the relevance of the findings and profile analysis in school settings.