Academics Are from Mars, Practitioners Are from Venus: Analyzing Content Alignment within Technical Communication Forums

Purpose: Technical communication research should link the academy to industry and sustain both with a foundation for solving problems and identifying new areas of inquiry. However, the publication needs and motivations of academics and practitioners have resulted in content alignment issues so diver...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Technical communication (Washington) 2016-11, Vol.63 (4), p.314-327
Main Authors: Boettger, Ryan K., Friess, Erin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academy-Industry Relationship
Alignment
Analysis
Applied Research
Audiences
Business
Communication
Communication of technical information
Communication Research
Content Analysis
Correspondence Analysis
Discipline
Methodology
Motivation
Research methods
Technical Communication
Technical Writing
Topics
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Purpose: Technical communication research should link the academy to industry and sustain both with a foundation for solving problems and identifying new areas of inquiry. However, the publication needs and motivations of academics and practitioners have resulted in content alignment issues so divergent that it oftentimes appears that both parties are from different planets. Method: We empirically analyzed the content within 1,048 published articles over a 20-year period within core professional and academic forums. We coded the articles for variables related to topic and audience. Data were analyzed through descriptive statistics and correspondence analysis. Results: Our field's core content forums have evolved little over the last 27 years. Results also indicated distinct differences in article topics and audience that reflect the varying interests of academics and practitioners. Intercom and Technical Communication Quarterly emerged as the most defined forums. Conclusion: The incongruity within professional and academic articles further suggests that we are a fragmented discipline. We recommend that our current content forums adopt structured abstracts and implications statements to unify our research and that researchers seek alternative audiences for their scholarship. We also call on practitioners to strengthen their involvement in research, either by contributing to scholarship or by volunteering their organizations as research sites.
ISSN:0049-3155
1938-369X