Communicating With Older Adults in Health Care Settings: Cultural and Ethnic Considerations

Wood, Joan B.

doi:10.1080/0380127890150403

Cited by 10 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 12 publications

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“…A wrong or poor diagnosis would at best lead to repeated outpatient visits, unneeded hospitalization, and unnecessary expense, and at worst unattainable health outcomes or even death (Makoul, Arntson, & Scho®eld, 1995;Sharf, 1990). Misunderstanding of medical recommendations would result in poor cooperation on the part of the patient (DiNicola & DiMatteo, 1984;Dunbar-Jacob, Dwyer, & Dunning, 1991), frustration on the part of the physician (Gerber, 1987;Gibbs, 1989;Wyatt, 1991), and poor prognosis (Diaz-Duque, 1989;Wood, 1989). The end result is an ineective utilization of the health care system (Guendelman & Witt, 1991±1992;Masur, 1981).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Communicating information in conversations: a cross-cultural comparison

1999

International Journal of Intercultural Relations

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ABSTRACT. The purpose of this study was to compare the amount of information sent by the speaker, received and retrieved by the listener in inter-and intra-cultural conversations. Three hypotheses were tested: (1) in their conversations, inter-cultural interactants would communicate signi®cantly less information than intra-cultural interactants with other variables held constant, (2) the two inter-cultural conditions would not be dierent from each other in terms of the amount of information communicated, and the same would be true with the two intra-cultural conditions, and (3) in their conversations, the speakers in inter-cultural conditions would send the same amount of information as speakers in intracultural conditions given that all speakers would pass a test on the materials they were going to present. Participants were 40 Canadian and 40 Chinese university students, and they were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions. Each dyad engaged in two medical conversations, which were videotaped upon the consent of the participants. The nature of the conversations resembled physician-patient face-to-face interactions. Results from written tests immediately following the conversations provided strong support for Hypothesis 1 and 2, and results from viewing the videotapes provided partial support for Hypothesis 3. In relation to the amount of information sent by the speakers, listeners in inter-and intra-cultural conditions retrieved only 50% and 75% of the information respectively. Based on the ®ndings, one may argue that inter-cultural communication differs signi®cantly from intra-cultural communication in the amount of information Int. J. Intercultural Rel. Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 387±409, 1999 # 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0147-1767/99 $ -see front matter PII: S0147-1767(99)00003-6 www.elsevier.com/locate/ijintrel *The author would like to thank Dr Ronald Hoppe for helpful comments on the manuscript and for support in completing this study; Dr Janet Bavelas, for crucial guidance in designing and conducting the experiment; Dr Michael Bond for enlightening suggestions on the design of the experiment; Drs Lorne Rosenblood, Bruno Zumbo, Peter MacMillan, Cindy Hardy, and Pat Konkin, and Trudy Johnson, for statistical consulting and helpful comments on the manuscript; and all the participants, for their time and eorts in making this study possible.Finally, the author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for insightful comments. *University of Northern British Columbia, Department of Psychology, 3333 University Way, Prince George, B.C. Canada V2N 4Z9, Canada. Tel.: +250-960-6502; Fax: +250-960-5536.; E-mail: lih@unbc.ca This research is based in part on the author's doctoral thesis presented to the Department of Psychology at the University of Victoria. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 45th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, Albuquerque, New Mexico, May 25±29, 1995. 387 communicated in situat...

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