Malcolm Mac Parks

In the United States, Blacks are disproportionately impacted by HIV/AIDS. Sexual networks and concurrent relationships have emerged as important contributors to the heterosexual transmission of HIV. To date, Africa is the only continent where an understanding of the impact of sexual concurrency has been conveyed in HIV prevention messaging. This project was developed by researchers and members of the Seattle, Washington, African American and African-Born communities, using the principles of community-based participatory research (CBPR). Interest in developing concurrency messaging came from the community and resulted in the successful submission of a community–academic partnership proposal to develop and disseminate HIV prevention messaging around concurrency. The authors describe (a) the development of concurrency messaging through the integration of collected formative data and findings from the scientific literature; (b) the process of disseminating the message in the local Black community; and (c) imp...

This study assesses the current state of undergraduate instruction in empirical research methods in communication and offers recommendations for enhancing such instruction. Responses to an online questionnaire were received from 149 communication-related programs at four-year colleges and universities. Just over 85% of responding programs offered an empirical methods course. Although the course often covered both qualitative and quantitative methods, instruction was heavily slanted toward quantitative methods and topics common to both qualitative and quantitative inquiry. The empirical methods course was usually required for graduation, but it was typically not well integrated with the rest of the curriculum and taken late in students’ undergraduate careers. Additional analyses examined staffing and class sizes as well as the most common topics and activities. Four recommendations are advanced for enhanced instruction in empirical methods in communication research. These were evaluated in light of feedback from respondents to the original questionnaire.