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The model used as the basis for regulation of human radiation exposures in the United States has been a source of controversy for decades because human health consequences have not been determined with statistically meaningful certainty for the dose levels allowed for radiation workers and the general public. This dissertation evaluates the evolution of the science and regulation of radiation health effects in the United States since the early 1900s using actor-network theory and the concept of co-production of science and social order. This approach elucidated the ordering instruments that operated at the nexus of the social and the natural in making institutions, identities, discourses, and representations, and the sociotechnical imaginaries animating the use of those instruments, that culminated in a regulatory system centered on the linear no-threshold dose-response model and the As Low As Reasonably Achievable philosophy. The science of radiation health effects evolved in parallel with the development of radiation-related technologies and the associated regulatory system. History shows the principle of using the least amount of radiation exposure needed to achieve the desired effect became established as a social convention to help avoid inadvertent harm long before there was a linear no-threshold dose-response model. Because of the practical need to accept some level of occupational radiation exposure, exposures from medical applications of radiation, and some de minimis exposure to the general public, the ALARA principle emerged as an important ordering instrument even before the linear no-threshold model had gained wide support. Even before ALARA became the law, it had taken hold in a manner that allowed the nuclear industry to rationalize its operations as representing acceptable levels of risk, even though it could not be proven that the established exposure limits truly precluded harm to the exposed individuals. Laboratory experiments and epidemiology indicated that a linear dose-response model appeared suitable as a "cautious assumption" by the 1950s. The linear no-threshold model proved useful to both the nuclear establishment and its detractors. In the hands of proponents of nuclear technologies, the model predicted that occupational exposures and exposures to the public represented small risks compared to naturally occurring levels of radiation and other risks that society deemed acceptable. Conversely, opponents of nuclear technologies used the model to advance their causes by predicting health impacts for undesirable numbers of people if large populations received small radiation exposures from sources such as fallout from nuclear weapon testing or effluents from nuclear reactor operations. In terms of sociotechnical imaginaries, the linear no-threshold model was compatible with both of the dominant imaginaries involved in the actor-network. In the technocratic imaginary of institutions such as the Atomic Energy Commission, the model served as a tool for qualified experts to make risk-informed decisions about applications of nuclear technologies. In the socially progressive imaginary of the citizen activist groups, the model empowered citizens to formulate arguments informed by science and rooted in the precautionary principle to challenge decisions and actions by the technocratic institutions. This enduring dynamic tension has led to the model retaining the status of "unproven but useful" even as the underlying science has remained contested. Doctor of Philosophy This dissertation provides a social science perspective on an enduring paradox of the nuclear industry: why is regulation of radiation exposure based on a model that everyone involved agrees is wrong? To answer that question, it was necessary to delve into the history of radiation science to establish how safety regulation began and evolved along with the understanding of radiation's health effects. History shows the philosophy of keeping radiation exposures as small as possible for any given application developed long ago when the health effects of radiation were very uncertain. This practice turned out to be essential as science started to indicate that there may not be a safe threshold dose below which radiation exposure had no potential for health consequences. By the 1950s, a combination of theory, experiments, health studies of the survivors of the World War II atomic bombings, and other evidence suggested that the risk of cancer was proportional to the amount of radiation a person received (i.e., linear). Although this "linear no-threshold" model was far from proven, both sides used it in debates over nuclear weapon testing and safety standards for nuclear reactors in the 1950s through the early 1970s. Since the model predicted small health risks for the levels of radiation experienced by radiation workers and the public, nuclear advocates used it to argue that the risks were smaller than many other risks that people accept every day. At the same time, opposing activists used the model to argue that small cancer likelihoods added up to a lot of cancers when large populations were exposed. This decades-long discourse effectively institutionalized the model. The model's "unproven but useful" status was strengthened in the early 1970s when the Atomic Energy Commission supplemented its numeric exposure limits by turning the longtime practice of dose minimization into a requirement. This "As Low As Reasonably Achievable" requirement plays a vital role in rationalizing why a non-zero exposure limit is safe enough despite the fact that the linear no-threshold model treats any amount of radiation as harmful.

The highway, its promise of freedom and mobility, stands as a source of intrigue in American culture. Yet, the asphalt and dashed lines that cut across the country conceal the contentious history that accompanied interstate highway construction. This dissertation examines the social and spatial meanings of interstate highway plans in the United States at different historical and geographic scales. This account begins in the late 1930's and travels through the mid 1940's where I discuss Norman Bel Geddes's 1939 Worlds Fair Exhibit, "Futurama" and Robert Moses's 1944 Baltimore Arterial Report. This analysis demonstrates how each man inscribed social values into proposed developments within geographic space. From here I move to Baltimore where from 1944 until about 1979, countless proposals called for the construction of an arterial highway that would cut into the heart of the city. By drawing from the archival records left by Movement Against Destruction (MAD), Relocation Action Movement (RAM), and other groups in that fought against roadway plans in Baltimore, I explore how activists lived, understood, and challenged the new social arrangements embedded in the proposed highway system. I introduce the term infrastructural imaginaries to account for how the proposal or construction of spatially embedded systems seeks to transform lived material and geographic arrangements. The concept of infrastructural imaginaries expands upon Sheila Jasanoff and San-Hyun Kim's "sociotechnical imaginaries" to address how proposed futures appropriate spatial environments and how people lived, understood, and conceptualize themselves within these emergent spaces. The framework of infrastructural imaginaries utilizes Henri Lefebvre's conceptual triad of spatial practice, representations of space, and representational space to analyze the dynamic interactions between infrastructure planning, lived experience, and articulations of possible futures. To study the infrastructural imaginary, the immaterial form, provides a fertile space from which to isolate places where systems fail to take hold, where alternative understanding emerge, and where new forms social interaction takes place. Ph. D. The interstate highway, its promise of freedom and mobility, stands as a source of intrigue in American culture. Yet, the asphalt and dashed lines that cut across the country conceal the contentious history that accompanied interstate highway construction. Following the passage of the 1956 Federal Aid Interstate Highway Act movements called ‘freeway revolts’ began in cities across the United States. These protests resisted the construction of highways in urban areas. Additionally, these social movements called attention to the planning practices that condemned the houses of low income and minority populations, clear-cut park land, and disrupted the urban fabric. This dissertation examines Baltimore’s ‘freeway revolt’ using archival documents left by the many activist groups who participated in attempting to stop the highway. Rather than presenting a comprehensive history of these events, this dissertation pays attention to how social understandings of geographic space contributed to highway plans, organized activism, and the practices of those who lived under the threat of impending infrastructure.

This dissertation explores the role of science and technology in democracy and the use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) through an illustrative case on a uranium mining controversy in the US state of Virginia. Arguably, traditional STS scholarship has primarily served what we might call an unmasking function by working to expose political, cultural, gender, corporate, and other factors that get masked by the cultural authority of scientific expertise. Following the lead of other STS scholars seeking to move beyond an unmasking-only mode of scholarship, this dissertation offers a novel take on the relationship between expertise and public controversy over technoscience by suggesting that cost-benefit analysis might serve a beneficial pro-democratic ritual role. To explore this question of the role played by expertise and what we might learn and recommend from approaching CBA as a democratic ritual, I consider the case of a uranium mining and milling controversy in Virginia. This controversy surfaced in two distinct historical moments and prominently featured technical studies utilizing expert predictive methods. I analyze these texts from the perspective of the sociopolitical ritual theory developed in the dissertation and then suggest a set of recommendations regarding how we might humanize and deploy CBA within the context of enhancing rituals that serve to maintain liberal democratic political imaginaries. Ph. D.

I bring together ethnographic interviews with deck officers, studies in actor-network theory, explicit and tacit knowledge theory, and performativity theory in this work. I prove that bridge technologies produce what are called mimeomorphic (repeatable with some variation) actions that contain no deck officer collective tacit knowledge. I argue that deck officer bridge watch situated actions are mostly polimorphic (actions can vary depending on social context), and these actions are in fact performatives (in an Austin sense) derived from a more oral than literate performance production process. These performatives constantly build the mariner's identity within the maritime deck officer community and their successful performatives give deck officers agency in the form of an oppositional view to deskilling. These same performative acts are the value of the mariner's experiential technological knowledge within the ship's bridge technology framework. Ph. D.

This dissertation is comprised of two manuscripts that explore various contestations and representations of knowledge about the highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1virus. In the first manuscript, I explore three narratives that have been produced to describe the 20-year journey of the virus. The journey begins in 1996 when the virus was a singular localized animal virus but then over the next 20 years multiplied its ontological status through a (de)stabilized global network of science and politics that promoted both fears of contagion and politics of otherness. Written by and for powerful actors and institutions in the global North, the narratives focused on technical solutions and outbreak fears. In doing so, the narratives produced policies and practices of biopower that obscured alternative considerations for equity, social justice, and wellbeing for the marginalized groups most directly affected by the H5N1 virus. The second manuscript explores a unique aspect of the H5N1 virus's journey as an emerging infectious disease -- its representation as a potential weapon for bioterrorists. The US government's recent attempt to secure what constitutes H5N1 knowledge produced a global debate between scientists and policy makers over how to balance the nation-state's desire for security with the life science's tradition of openly shared research. Known as the dual-use dilemma, this debate set up binaries of impossible reconciliation between the two groups. This dissertation argues that the dual-use dilemma obscures larger questions of justice. I propose a new concept of justice, knowledge justice, as an alternate more globally inclusive framework for exploring ways out of the dilemma. The concept is premised on the assertion that if knowledge is framed to obscure justice issues, then the justice questions of owning that knowledge can be used as a way out of the dual-use dilemma. Thus, knowledge becomes a question of justice that should be as important to policy makers as more traditional justice considerations of inequities in distribution, recognition, representation, and fairness. Ph. D.

The goal of this research project is to tell the story of acquisition expertise development within the DOD using the evolution of the Defense Acquisition University as its backdrop. It is a story about the persistent frame that claims expertise leads to acquisition success. It is about 40 plus years of competing perspectives of how best to acquire that expertise and their shaping effects. It is about technology choices amidst cultural and political conflict. It is about how budget, users, infrastructure, existing and emerging technologies, identity and geography all interrelate as elements within the technology of expertise development. Finally, it is about how at various times in the evolution of the Defense Acquisition University the technologies of tacit knowledge transfer have been elevated or diminished. Ph. D.

Historical accounts depict NASA's interactions with American citizens beyond government agencies and aerospace firms since the 1950s and 1960s as efforts to 'sell' its human space flight initiatives and to position external publics as would-be observers, consumers, and supporters of such activities. Characterizing citizens solely as celebrants of NASA's successes, however, masks the myriad publics, engagement modes, and influences that comprised NASA's efforts to forge connections between human space flight and citizens after Apollo 11 culminated. While corroborating the premise that NASA constantly seeks public and political approval for its costly human space programs, I argue that maintaining legitimacy in light of shifting social attitudes, political priorities, and divided interest in space flight required NASA to reconsider how to serve and engage external publics vis-à-vis its next major human space program, the Space Shuttle. Adopting a sociotechnical imaginary featuring the Shuttle as a versatile technology that promised something for everyone, NASA sought to engage citizens with the Shuttle in ways appealing to their varied, expressed interests and became dependent on some publics' direct involvement to render the vehicle viable economically, socially, and politically. NASA's ability and willingness to democratize the Shuttle proved difficult to sustain, however, as concerns evolved following the Challenger accident among NASA personnel, political officials, and external publics about the Shuttle's purpose, value, safety, and propriety. Mapping the publics and engagement modes NASA regarded as crucial to the Shuttle's legitimacy, this case study exposes the visions of public accountability and other influences -- including changing perceptions of a technology -- that can govern how technoscientific institutions perceive and engage various external publics. Doing so illuminates the prospects and challenges associated with democratizing decisions and uses for space and, perhaps, other technologies managed by U.S. government agencies while suggesting a new pathway for scholarly inquiry regarding interactions between technoscientific institutions and external publics. Expanding NASA's historical narrative, this study demonstrates that entities not typically recognized as space program contributors played significant roles in shaping the Shuttle program, substantively and culturally. Conceptualizing and valuing external publics in these ways may prove key for NASA to sustain human space flight going forward. Ph. D.

The introduction of social media presented a significant challenge to the often secretive culture of the U.S. military. DoD struggled with publishing a social media policy forcing the armed services to develop their own policies, which were all inconsistent. When DoD finally established a social media policy in 2007, certain social media sites were banned from the Services' networks for a variety of reasons -- the one most often quoted was risk. In February 2010, DoD completely reversed its policy and embraced social media. The new policy required the military to allow open access on the networks to social media for all employees, despite much resistance from internal stakeholders. In this dissertation, I research three significant events during the development of the DoD Social Media Policy: (1) the pre-policy environment, including actions to restrict social media on the DoD networks (2) coming to closure on the current policy and how DoD made its decision to open the networks to social media, and (3) the post-closure period and its ongoing and new tensions. This research project is a qualitative study of the evolution of social media (pre- and post a formal policy) within the DoD through the lens of social construction of technology (SCOT) and a discourse analysis of the policy formulation. My findings indicated that references to security and privacy risk, sociotechnological inevitability, responsible online behavior and youth were particularly important to the military discourse on social media. The study concludes the risk is worth to benefit to service members who want to use social media. Service members accept the sociotechnological inevitability of social media and feel they are responsible enough to use it wisely. The issue of youth was found to be not really a concern and leadership emerged as a discourse and is often referenced to solve any issue that may arise from the use of social media within the military environment. Ph. D.

Each year the Department of Defense spends over $10 billion on its science and technology development efforts. While deemed an investment by proponents (and beneficiaries) technology development programs are particularly vulnerable in times of budget cuts. As the government moves forward with efforts to reduce spending the Department of Defense will be pressed to sustain current levels of spending on technology efforts. This situation is similar to the post-Cold War phase in defense planning when savings in spending were sought as a peace dividend. This dissertation examines the Department of Defense efforts during 1989-1992 to define certain technologies as critical to national security. Inherent in the effort to identify critical technologies was the desire to articulate technology ideology; to establish asymmetries of power and resources; and to patrol the boundaries of policy and responsibility. The questions are: What are the ideologies associated with technology development planning? What are the discursive mechanisms used to secure and reinforce power? And, what evidence of boundary work and network construction emerges from the examination? First, I distill from four years of defense technology planning documentation the explicit ideologies, the ideologies masked in metaphor, and the discourse strategies used to secure and sustain power. Following the deconstruction of the discursive elements I use Science and Technology Studies tools including boundary work, boundary objects, the Social Construction of Technology, and network theory, to further understand the heterogeneous process of defense technology development planning. The tools help explain the mechanisms by which elements of Department of Defense technology development form a connected structure. Finally, the examination yields a spherical network model for innovation that addresses the weaknesses of prior innovation network models. I conclude that in the face of uncertain budgets, technology planning relies upon ideology, power strategies, and boundary-work to build a network that protects funding and influence. In the current budget climate it will be interesting to see if the strategies are resurrected. The examination should be of interest to both the Science and Technology Studies scholar and the policy practitioner. And hopefully, the review will stimulate further examination and debate. Ph. D.

In this dissertation I explore discourse around the environmental risks of nanotechnology, and through this study of nanotechnology make the case that the dominance in risk discourse of regulatory science is limiting policy debate on environmental risks, and that specific initiatives should be undertaken to broaden debate not just on nanotechnology, but generally on the risks of new technologies. I argue that the treatment of environmental risk in public policy debates has failed for industrial chemicals, is failing for nanotechnology, and most certainly will fail for synthetic biology and other new technologies unless we change how we describe the impacts to people and other living things from the development and deployment of technology. However, I also contend that the nanotechnology case provides reason for optimism that risk can be given different, and better, treatment in environmental policy debates. I propose specific policy initiatives to advance a richer discourse around the environmental implications of emerging technologies. Evidence of enriched environmental policy debates would be a decentering of language concerning risk by developing within discourse language and practice directed toward enriching the human and environmental condition. Ph. D.

This dissertation explores motivation in decision-making and action in science and technology, through the lens of a case study: scientific data sharing in cancer research. The research begins with the premise that motivation and emotion are key elements of what it means to be human, and consequently, are important variables in how individuals make decisions and take action. At the same time, institutional controls and social messaging send a variety of signals intended to motivate specific actions and behaviors. Understanding the interplay between personal motives and social influences may point to strategies that better align individual and social perceptions and discourse. To explore these dynamics, this research centers on a large-scale cancer research program led by the National Institutes of Health's National Cancer Institute. The goal of the program is to encourage interoperability and data sharing between diverse and highly autonomous cancer centers across the U.S. Housed in an organization focused on biomedical informatics, the program has a technologically-focused mission; the goal is to facilitate institutional data sharing to connect the cancer research enterprise. This focus contrasts with the more relationship-based point-to-point data sharing currently reported by researchers as the norm. Researchers are motivated to share data with others under specific conditions: when there is a foundation of trust with the person or community being shared with; when the perceived reward of sharing is well-defined and of value to the person sharing; and when there is perceived to be a lower risk or cost than the benefit received. Without these conditions, there are often determined to be insufficient incentives and rewards for sharing. Data sharing is both a personal decision and a social level problem. Data is both subjective and personal; it is often an extension of researcher's identity, and serves as a measure of his or her value and capability. In the search for standards and interoperable data sets, institutional and technologically-mediated forms of data sharing are perceived to ignore the subjective and local knowledge embodied in the data being shared. To explore these dimensions, this study considers the technology, economics, legal elements, and personal sides of data sharing, and applies two conceptual frameworks to evaluate alternatives for action. Ph. D.

The main argument of this dissertation is that the White Mountain Apache Tribe's appropriation of ecological restoration played a vital role in reinstituting control over knowledge production and eco-cultural resources on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in the second half of the twentieth century. As a corollary, I argue that the shift in knowledge production practices from a paternalistic foundation to a community-based approach resulted in positive consequences for the ecological health of the Apachean landscape and Apache culture. The democratization of science and technology on the reservation, therefore, proved paramount to the reestablishment of a relatively sustainable Apache society. Beginning with the Indian New Deal, the White Mountain Apache slowly developed the capacity to employ ecological restoration as an eco-political tool to free themselves from a long history of Euro-American cultural oppression and natural resource exploitation. Tribal restoration projects embodied the dual political function of cultural resistance to and cultural exchange with Western-based land management organizations. Apache resistance challenged Euro-American notions of restoration, nature, and sustainability while maintaining cultural identity, reasserting cultural autonomy, and protecting tribal sovereignty. But at the same time, the Apache depended on cultural exchange with federal and state land management agencies to successfully manage their natural resources and build an ecologically knowledgeable tribal workforce. Initially adopting a utilitarian conservation model of land management, restoration projects aided the creation of a relatively strong tribal economy. In addition, early successes with trout, elk, and forest restoration projects eventually granted the Tribe political leverage when they sought to reassume control over reservation resources from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Fish and Wildlife Service. Building on this foundation, Apache restoration work significantly diverged in character from the typical Euro-American restoration project by the 1990s. While striving toward self-sufficiency, the Tribe hybridized tribal cultural values with Western ecological values in their restoration efforts. These projects evolved the tripartite capacity to heal ecologically degraded reservation lands, to establish a degree of economic freedom from the federal government, and to restore cultural traditions. Having reversed their historical relationship of subjugation with government agencies, the Apache currently have almost full decision-making powers over tribal eco-cultural resources. Ph. D.

Many scientific claims being made today are not based on established scientific principles. They are a result of motivating factors that include media, political influences, legal and social issues, economic pursuits, the experimental procedure itself, peer review, and, central to this thesis, the lack of science education of the public. Intelligent Design, a much discussed potential theory of biological origins is one of these claims. Intelligent Design offers an array of scientific and probabilistic arguments supporting the concept that an intelligent agency better accounts for certain aspects of the natural world. The response and reaction to this theory within the science, political, education and religious communities has been increasingly expressive. Some believe that Intelligent Design is a threat to Darwinian evolution, some argue that teaching ID as an evolutionary theory is "only fair." And all believe the stakes are high--to the victor goes the privilege of teaching their theory as biology in the public school classroom. This study of Intelligent Design is not an extensive quantitative review of primary materials in the scientific debate, or qualitative reviews of sweeping breadth of religious-based theories. Rather, a quantitative content analysis with selected primary sources was conducted to acquire data to discover which arguments constitutes effective presentation of Intelligent Design, to whom they are presented, and which arguments are promulgated and which are not. The study analyses what rhetorical devices (such as use of selective word choices and framing techniques) are utilized, whether consciously or unconsciously, in the presentation of these arguments. Master of Science

This thesis takes a fresh look at software, treating it as a document, manuscript, corpus, or text to be consumed among communities of programmers and uncovering the social roles of these texts within two specific sub-communities and comparing them. In the paper, the social roles of the texts are placed within the context of the technical and cultural constraints and environments in which programs are written. Within that context, the comments emphasize the metaphoric status of programming languages and the social role of the comments themselves. These social roles are combined with the normative intentions for each comment, creating a dynamic relationship of form and function for both normative and identity-oriented purposes. The relationship of form and function is used as a unifying concept for a more detailed investigation of the construction of comments, including a look at a literary device that relies on the plural pronoun "we" as the subject. The comments used in this analysis are derived from within the source code of the Linux kernel and from a Corporate environment in the US. Master of Science

IPv6, a new Internet protocol designed to exponentially increase the global availability of Internet addresses, has served as a locus for incendiary international tensions over control of the Internet. Esoteric technical standards such as IPv6, on the surface, appear not socially significant. The technical community selecting IPv6 claimed to have excised sociological considerations from what they considered an objective technical design decision. Far from neutrality, however, the development and adoption of IPv6 intersects with contentious international issues ranging from tensions between the United Nations and the United States, power struggles between international standards authorities, U.S. military objectives, international economic competition, third world development objectives, and the promise of global democratic freedoms. This volume examines IPv6 in three overlapping epochs: the selection of IPv6 within the Internet's standards setting community; the adoption and promotion of IPv6 by various stakeholders; and the history of the administration and distribution of the finite technical resources of Internet addresses. How did IPv6 become the answer to presumed address scarcity? What were the alternatives? Once developed, stakeholders expressed diverse and sometimes contradictory expectations for IPv6. Japan, the European Union, China, India, and Korea declared IPv6 adoption a national priority and an opportunity to become more competitive in an American-dominated Internet economy. IPv6 activists espoused an ideological belief in IPv6, linking the standard with democratization, the eradication of poverty, and other social objectives. The U.S., with ample addresses, adopted a laissez-faire approach to IPv6 with the exception of the Department of Defense, which mandated an upgrade to the new standard to bolster distributed warfare capability. The history of IPv6 includes the history of the distribution of the finite technical resources of "IP addresses," globally unique binary numbers required for devices to exchange information via the Internet. How was influence over IP address allocation and control distributed globally? This history of IPv6 explains what's at stake economically, politically, and technically in the development and adoption of IPv6, suggesting a theoretical nexus between technical standards and politics and arguing that views lauding the Internet standards process for its participatory design approach ascribe unexamined legitimacy to a somewhat closed process. Ph. D.

The Human Genome Project, a multi-national initiative to map and sequence the entire human genome, is expected to reach completion in the year 2003. One of the more immediate and direct results of this remarkable scientific effort is an increase in both the number and range of genetic tests available. Although there is enormous value in the knowledge gained from information that predicts present or future disease, there are also some risks. This thesis, based on the content analysis of genetic nondiscrimination legislation and evidence obtained from individuals involved in the policy formation process, reveals how the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) Program of the U.S. Human Genome Project is dealing with the possibility that insurers and employers will misuse genetic information. The findings from both the content analysis and the lived experience survey demonstrate that the ELSI program has made a substantial impact on forming this legislation. Master of Science

The effectiveness of a treatment for communication apprehension (CA) was examined in this study. Trait and state anxiety were examined by using community college students enrolled in four sections of a required basic speech communication course. The sample size consisted of 81 students, ranging in ages 17-82. Each student was asked to complete a trait anxiety measure (Personal Report of Communication Apprehension-24) during the second class meeting (pre-test) and again on the last day of class (post-test). For the state anxiety measure, students were asked to complete the Speaker Anxiety (SA) Scale immediately after delivering an informative speech at the end of the semester. Two classes served as the treatment group, receiving a 15-minute combination anxiety reduction technique and two classes served as the control group, receiving no treatment. A significant interaction was found in physiological activation, an important direct manifestation of state anxiety commonly experienced as irregular heart beat, dry mouth, sweaty palms, and feelings of exhaustion. The findings showed that the students in the control group who spoke in the second week had higher anxieties than did the other students. A dividend of this investigation was the result that supported frequent anecdotal reports from past speech students; namely, that at the conclusion of the basic speech course, students in this study reported a reduction in trait anxiety. Of the other comparisons made, race and maternal encouragement were shown as major influences for the trait of communication apprehension. Future research should use larger samples of community college students and focus on state anxiety with trait anxiety as a monitor for stability. Treatments might also be expanded to weekly sessions during a major portion of one semester. Ph. D.