Audience Adaptiveness in Job Application Letters Written by College Students: An Exploratory Study
Stephen M. Merrill
- School: Purdue University (0183)
- Degree: Ph.D.
- Date: 1986 pp: 155
- Advisor: Lauer, Janice
- Source: DAI-A 48/01, p. 121, Jul 1987
- Subjects: Language, Modern (0291)
- ProQuest Document Number:
- ISBN:
- UMI Number: AAT 8709833
Abstract:
-
This study sought the answers to two key questions: First, what elements of text influence the
decisions that staff members in personnel offices make when they select applicants for positions
advertised in the newspaper? Second, are there significant differences between those variables that
influence readers in personnel departments and teachers of business writing courses? Five classes of
variables were derived from studies on persuasive and informative discourse and writings on job
application letters. They were (1) overall length, (2) use of contexting information, (3) use of
discourse structuring strategies, (4) syntactic complexity, and (5) grammatical and mechanical
correctness. Application letters to be analyzed were written by students in the same major using a
uniform set of credentials designed to represent the "average" student graduating from the program
with a four year degree in Computer Technology. These sample letters were evaluated by staff members
in two personnel departments for probability of callback scores and by teachers within a business
writing program for overall quality of writing.
Regression analysis of the data indicated that overall length and use of contexting information had a significant influence on both types of readers. Syntactic complexity, as measured by average number of words per t-unit, clauses per t-unit, and average number of words per clause, had a significant but slight effect on academic readers. Finally a strong negative correlation was found between probability of call-back scores and the total number of grammatical and mechanical errors found in the body of the letter.
Dissertations
We post the dissertation abstracts
our graduates enter into ProQuest's
database of Dissertations and Theses (and link to 24-page previews as available).
Those at Purdue can locate the full texts through the Purdue Library.