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Some of the first, and potentially most important, steps that researchers must take in the field are those related to rapport development with their participants. Both novice and experienced field researchers negotiate the difficulties and mysteries of establishing and maintaining this rapport. In this research, it was our intention to disentangle the often puzzling rapport-building process. We contacted 16 field researchers with varying degrees of experience and asked them to detail their relational turning points with select participants. Using the Retrospective Interview Technique (RIT) as a narrative prompt we uncovered a pattern of rapport-building that took the shape of five semipermeable phases of researcher—participant rapport: Other-Orientation, Self-in-Relation to Other, Self-and-Other Linking, Interpersonal Connection, and Partnership. In this article we propose a preliminary stage model of rapport-building trajectories, and offer implications such a model might have for field researchers.

This study examines teleworkers' job satisfaction related to the use of and satisfaction with a variety of communication channels and workers' personality type. U.S. teleworkers (N = 384) completed an online survey and self-reported on dimensions of communication channel satisfaction, job satisfaction, and personality. Results indicated that extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness are positively correlated with job satisfaction. Additionally, significant moderating effects were found for the relationship between openness and phone and video communication, and agreeableness and phone communication on job satisfaction. Findings from this study yield important practical implications for organizations including suggestions for optimizing communication satisfaction for employees of differing personality types and recommendations to help organizations effectively hire and retain teleworkers.

The possible effects of ageist language and ageism on the structure and function of intimate and non-intimate relationships have received significant attention from social scientists. Recent research grounded in communication accommodation theory (Giles, Mulac, Bradac, & Johnson, ) point toward the numerous consequences of both negative and positive attitudes toward ageing. Focusing specifically on health care settings, this article reviews recent theoretical positions and empirical findings that link ageist language and ageism to these positive and negative social consequences, and offers pragmatic suggestions and directions for future research.

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