COMM 501 ABSTRACT FOR COMMENTS.
Draft 3
Connectivity: A Case Study of Internal Communication Processes among Transit Operators (drivers) at a Municipal Transit System.
Denise Kirkpatrick
Edmonton Transit System (ETS) is a large, diverse organization that employees approximately 1,800 transit operators that work at various operational garages throughout the city. Operators have no computer access therefore administrative staff has difficulties communicating messages and receiving messages from operators. To gain an insight of the daily communication interactions within the garages, unobtrusive testing will be conducted to observe operators’ processes for reporting in and reporting out for their shift. To further understand a questionnaire will be distributed to a simple random sample of ETS operators to determine what communication mediums they use personally and professionally and what their communication preferences are. This case study analysis will attempt to determine transit operators’ connectivity to the organization and will provide recommendations of communication tools that will enhance horizontal communications between operators and administrative staff.
DRAFT 2:
A Case Study of Internal Communication Processes among Transit Operators (drivers) at a Municipal Transit System.
Edmonton Transit System (ETS) is a large, diverse organization that employees approximately 1,800 transit operators that work at various bus operation garages across the city. Administrative staff has difficulties delivering secondary messages (not emergency messages) and receiving messages from operators. To gain an accurate insight of the communications processes, unobtrusive testing will be conducted to observe employees communication process when they report to work. To further understand the process a questionnaire will be handed out to all ETS transit operators to determine what they currently use as communication mediums personally and professionally and what communications mediums will enhance the communication flow. The case study will provide recommendations of communication tools that will encourage two way horizontal communications between operators and administrative staff.
DRAFT 1:
Communication among Subcultures: A Case Study of Internal Communication Processes among Transit Operators (drivers) at a Municipal Transit System.
Edmonton Transit System (ETS) is a large, diverse organization that employees approximately 1,800 transit operators that work at various bus operation garages across the city. Delivering secondary messages (messages other than emergency messages) and receiving messages from operators is an on-going challenge. This case study will determine the operators view on flow of information horizontally and what their preferred communication tools are. This study will determine if there is a relationship between the subcultures and the communication tool preferences. In order to gain insights unobtrusive research will be conducted in order to observe employees communication process when they report to work. To gain insights into employees preferred communication tools a questionnaire will be handed out to ETS bus operators. The case study will provide recommendations of communication tools that will encourage two-way communications between operators.
denisekirkpatrick 
Hi Denise, comments as follows:
– delivering secondary messages “to”?
– maybe some insight into what you will use to create your questionnaire? any particular analysis tool?
– also, how will you assess your results?
Hey Denise,
Couple of things to think about…I would say, based on your description, that you’re doing an observational study, maybe not a case – which tends to be more in depth look at one thing (more you’d do a case study of one garage). You’re maybe also identifying the subcultures, the preferred communication methods, info flow. Think about how you are going to determine what the subcultures are (descriptions & defining characteristics), and how to identify preferred communications tools. Rather than “unobtrusive” research, probably the main method would be observational. But I think while you could find out some about preferred comm methods, it would be tough to use only observation to find subcultures, or their view of information flow. If you don’t think you could do surveys, you could use a technique like a group interview (it’s a focus group without the intent to get to consensus) to get one or two garages to talk about info flow and comm methods, process of listing, preferences, alternatives they’d try out. You could start out with a few garages and go until you got pretty much to saturation (groups stop giving you much new info).
You might really be looking at 2 things here. First, you need to figure out a way to identify and describe the subcultures. You wont be able to do much about linking additional info into a sub until you’ve got that down. So I’d start with rewriting that as your first step, then the comm/info stuff as the second part.
Ok I cleaned it up. What do you think of this version (DRAFT 2)? I will remove subcultures as this may be a part that comes into play naturally during my research.
I think it’ll work as an abstract, but you may need to explain unobtrusive testing, and how you’ll handle all the surveys (on Friday for sure)