Understanding Research in Personal Relationships: A Text With Readings

William Dragon, Steve Duck

SAGE, May 1, 2005 - Family & Relationships - 352 pages

Understanding Research in Personal Relationships is a comprehensive introduction to the key readings on human and close relationships. Organized into twelve thematic chapters with editorial commentary throughout, the editors offer a critical reading of the major research articles in the field of relationship studies published in the last few years. Scholarly papers, two per chapter, are presented in an abridged form and critiqued in a carefully structured way that instructs students on the way to read research, and to critically evaluate research in this field. The book, therefore, has a thoroughly didactic focus as the student is given historical, theoretical and methodological contexts to each article as well as an explanation of key terms and ideas.

Contents

• Attraction: 12
• Love: 37
• Sexuality: 59
• Has the Double Standard Disappeared?: 66
• Does the Sexual Double Standard Still Exist? Perceptions: 74
• Relationship Development: 85
• Social Power: 113
• Relational Maintenance: 129
• Jealousy: 162
• Conflict in Relationships: 174
• Relationship Disturbance: 195
• Loneliness: 221
• The Importance of Social Networks: 243
• Cyber Relationships: 265
• Glossary: 286
• References: 302
• Author Index: 328
• Subject Index: 334

About the author

Steve Duck taught in the United Kingdom before taking up the Daniel and Amy Starch Distinguished Research Chair in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Iowa. He has been a professor of communication studies, an adjunct professor of psychology, and a former Dean’s Administrative Fellow and is now Chair of the Rhetoric Department. He has taught interpersonal communication courses, mostly on relationships but also on nonverbal communication, communication in everyday life, construction of identity, communication theory, organizational leadership, and procedures and practices for leaders. More recently, he has taught composition, speaking, and rhetoric, especially for STEM students. By training an interdisciplinary thinker, Steve has focused on the development and decline of relationships, although he has also done research on the dynamics of television production techniques and persuasive messages in health contexts. Steve has written or edited 60 books on relationships and other matters and was the founder and, for the first 15 years, the editor of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. His book Meaningful Relationships: Talking, Sense, and Relating won the G. R. Miller Book Award from the Interpersonal Communication Division of the National Communication Association. Steve cofounded a series of international conferences on personal relationships. He won the University of Iowa’s first Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award in 2001 and the National Communication Association’s Robert J. Kibler Memorial Award in 2004 for “dedication to excellence, commitment to the profession, concern for others, vision of what could be, acceptance of diversity, and forthrightness.” He was the 2010 recipient of the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Helen Kechriotis Nelson Teaching Award for a lifetime of excellence in teaching, and in the same year was elected one of the National Communication Association’s Distinguished Scholars. He received the NCA’s 2019 Mark L. Knapp Award in Interpersonal Communication for career contributions to the study of interpersonal communication. He hopes to make it to the Iowa State Fair one day.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Understanding Research in Personal Relationships: A Text With Readings; EBSCO ebook academic collection
• Editors: William Dragon, Steve Duck
• Edition: abridged
• Publisher: SAGE, 2005
• ISBN: 076194222X, 9780761942221
• Length: 352 pages
• Subjects: Family & Relationships / General; Psychology / Interpersonal Relations; Psychology / Research & Methodology; Psychology / Social Psychology