Within the last few years numerous support groups have emerged on the Internet, presenting new opportunities for patients to communicate with health care professionals and other patients. The present study examines discourse within online cancer support groups, increasing our understanding of sex differences in cybersupport. Two reproductive cancer groups were chosen for this investigation, the Ovarian Problems Mailing List (OPML) and the Prostate Problems Mailing List (PPML), making sex of the patient recognizable. Phenomenological thematic analysis was employed to describe and interpret messages sent and received. Analyses for the two groups were compared. Generally, it was found that the two online listservs provided opportunities for cancer patients to receive support, within western society's accepted forms of gendered communication.

Breast cancer often involves uniquely mutilating treatments and is frequently assumed to produce problems specifically associated with feminine identity: body image and sexuality. But empirical research to support this assumption is sometimes mixed and nearly always quantitative in method. This study examines breast talk--specific references to breasts and breast cancer in women's illness narratives--collected in 20 open-ended, in-depth interviews with 17 White, middle-class survivors in Maine. Participants varied in age, marital status, motherhood sexual orientation, family history of breast cancer, medical diagnoses, and treatments. Phenomenological analysis of the breast talk resulted in four interrelated clusters of meanings: the medicalized breast, the functional breast, the gendered breast, and the sexualized breast. The analysis suggests both greater and fewer problems with femininity, sexuality, and body image than presumed by much research, and it urges researchers not to reproduce the objectifications and stereotyping of sexist culture.

Sex-segregated sports require governing bodies to clearly and accurately place athletes in two categories, one labeled "men" and the other labeled "women." Sports governing bodies such as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) used sex testing procedures to attempt to verify the sex of athletes competing in women's events. In 2004, the IOC introduced the Stockholm Consensus to regulate the inclusion of, primarily, male-tofemale transsexual athletes, to compete at the Olympic Games. These governing bodies, and others, are dealing with society's basic categorization of humans and thus are entangled in attempts to scientifically and medically define sex. This article will focus on the history and implications of gender-verification testing and gender policy on notions of "fair play" and athlete eligibility.

This issue of &dquo;Doing Research,&dquo; guest edited by John Sherblom, completes the first year of the Research Committee's column of &dquo;disciplinary talk,&dquo; the informal conversation about how we do research. During this first year, four guest editors, all members of the Research Committee, have collaborated with me and The Buzz Editor to develop columns on practical issues: gaining access to an organization as a research site (March issue, guest edited by Pris Rogers); investigating new kinds of communication---electronic mail (June issue, guest edited by Jim Porter); and finding models for qualitative studies (September issue, guest edited by Dorothy Winsor). The Research Committee invites your participation to help make &dquo;Doing Research&dquo; provocative and helpful to readers of The Bulletin. We hope to get your responses to the 1993 columns and your suggestions for fashioning this new informal discourse. Please contact me with your feedback, ideas for future columns, and offers or recommendations of guest editors and writers. (Although surveys have proliferated in business communication research, they have not always been well constructed, asked important questions, or had their results adequately interpreted to provide meaningful and substantive information. This column addresses five important questions that must be considered if the results of our surveys are to be significant and useful: 1. What do we want to know? 2. About whom do we want to know it? 3. How do we word the questions? 4. How do we elicit appropriate and adequate responses? 5. How do we interpret the results? WHAT DO WE WANT TO KNOW?&dquo;What do we want to know?&dquo; is a complex question that entails not only the specific information we want to obtain, but how we want to analyze that information and the use to which we want to put the results. These decisions must be made when we are designing the survey rather than after we have obtained the responses.

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