EvalG2ssArtF2008

A Research-Driven Method" by Jo Mackiewicz
**Journal of Technical Writing & Communication 35.5 (2005): 291-315**.

Publishing Source, Author, and Citation Evaluation
Articles submitted for publication in this journal undergo a stringent review process by editors and a review board. The publisher is a professional, scholarly publishing house that has won numerous awards for submissions to the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication. The National Council for the Teachers of English and the Society of Technical Communication have declared several articles published by Baywood the “best” in the field. || Articles are also available online. Individual online rate is $97.
 * ===Publishing Source information:=== || The Publisher of the Mackiewicz article as found in the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication is Baywood Publishing Company of Amityville, NY. This publisher appears to be highly respected in the field of Technical and Professional Communications. **[SS: To learn more about JTWC, see the wiki page "Activity--Content (Professional Journals & Other Resources)" which is part of this wiki.]**
 * ===Basic Journal Information:=== || The Journal of Technical Writing and Communication was founded in 1971 and publishes communications research from the realms of business, science and technology; it presents current communications theory in areas such as visual communication, information design, visual rhetoric, and linguistics; and it promotes workplace understanding of computer-based applications, technical writing, audience demographics, and effective rhetoric. ||
 * ===Target Audience:=== || The target audience is wide ranging and includes people interested in computer applications, online presentations, audience analysis, and technical writing, as well as researchers concerned with communications and theory in a wide range of disciplines. ||
 * ===Subscriber, Reader, and Publisher Information:=== || Annual subscriptions include four volumes. Annual subscription rate for individuals is $102.

It is unknown what current readership numbers are based upon looking at the Baywood website.

Baywood does not appear to be a vanity press. Its Mission Statement is as follows:

“Since 1964, Baywood Publishing Company, Inc., has been committed to publishing scholarly and professional journals and books in the social sciences and humanities. We are dedicated to serving the academic and professional communities by providing the content they require in the format—print or electronic—that best meets their needs. We constantly strive to remain a leader in publishing, and keeping in print, authored and edited books that serve as "textual touchstones" for evolving academic fields. In effect, these texts formally record the current trends in theory, research, and practice within the disciplines while also charting promising new directions for researchers, teachers, and practitioners. Areas of interest include health policy, community health, gerontology, death and bereavement, computers in education, technical communication, and imagery.” Source: [|www.Baywood.com] ||
 * ===Editor Information:=== || Editor: Dr. CHARLES H. SIDES, Chair, Department of Communication, Fitchburg State College, Massachusetts


 * Education: ** Ph.D. University of Massachusetts-Amherst,1981; M.A. Clemson University, 1976; B.A. Clemson University, 1974.


 * Research Interests: ** Technical Communication; Rhetoric and Grammar; Southern Literature; and Culture.

"Technical Communication Frontiers," ATTW, 1994; "Freedom of Information in a Post 9-11 World," Baywood Publishing Company.
 * Current Projects: ** "Internships: Theory and Practice: A Guide for Corporations, Colleges, and College Students," Baywood Publishing Company, in progess; co-authored with Ann Mrvica.
 * Representative Publications: ** Executive Editor, "Journal of Technical Writing and Communication"; Editor, Baywood Book Series on Technical Communication, "How to Write and Present Technical Information," 3rd Edition, Oryx Press, 1999;


 * Professional Affiliations: ** Association of Teachers of Technical Writing.

Source: Fitchburg State College, 4 year university, w/ graduate programs http://www.fsc.edu/homepage/index.cfm ||
 * ===Author and Citations:=== || Dr. Jo Mackiewicz

Education: Ph.D., Applied Linguistics, Georgetown University, 2001. Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Andrea Tyler; Dissertation Title: The Co-Construction of Social Relationships in Writing Center Interactions: An Analysis of Politeness Strategies in Discourse Activity Frames.

M.A., English Studies and Linguistics, with honors, University of Minnesota Duluth, 1997. B.S., English, Magna Cum Laude, University of Wisconsin-Superior, 1995.

Academic Experience: 2005-present: Assistant Professor, Lewis Department of Humanities, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois; 2001-2005: Assistant Professor, Composition Department and Linguistics Program, University of Minnesota, Duluth; 1998-2001: Graduate Fellow, Linguistics Department, Georgetown University; 1995-1997: Teaching Assistant, Composition Department, University of Minnesota Duluth.

Courses Taught: // Technical Communication -- // Communication and Culture in Western Europe, Globalization & Localization, Key Concepts in Technical Communication, Technical Editing (& developing online version), Publication Management (& developing online version), Document Design, Advanced Writing-Engineering, Advanced Writing-Science, Cyber Theory and Practice (& Honors Seminar), College Writing, // Linguistics-- // Applied Linguistics, Introduction to Linguistics, Research Methods in Applied Linguistics (Teaching Assistant, Georgetown University), Linguistics and Writing (Teaching Assistant, Georgetown University) Academic Administration: 2007-present: Associate Director, Technical Communication Program, Illinois Institute of Technology Project Administration: 2007-present: Editor in Chief Elect, //IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication// Source: Jo Mackiewicz CV, Illinois Institute of Technology Website: [|http://www.iit.edu/~techcomm/files/faculty_cvs/Mackiewicz-CV-10-5-07norefs.pdf] The Carnegie Foundation, http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/classifications/ classifies the Illinois Institute of Technology, where Dr. Mackiewicz currently teaches, as a 4-year and above, private institution, consisting of a large graduate population and a great amount of research activity.
 * Edit the Website of the Technical Communication program for completeness, consistency, correctness, and accuracy during ongoing project to update the program site and make it more usable and accessible.
 * Coordinate with Chicago Society for Technical Communication to create a student chapter, generate student internships, and organize guest speakers.
 * Create and update promotional materials for the Technical Communication program.

Dr. Mackiewicz has published a great amount of articles in the field of Technical and Professional Communications and has a significant amount of practical experience in the subject. She is frequently cited by other authors in publications, as well as in her own material, and generally cites journal authors in her articles. Among awards that Dr. Mackiewicz has won, she has been awarded large amounts of grant money each year for her continued work. ||

Verifiability of Content
Choosing an appropriate typeface is critical in fields such as marketing, business, English and Chemistry, just to name a few.
 * ===How this article's content relates to current topic knowledge:=== || Typeface is a topic that fits into everyday life, even outside of technical communication.

Choosing fonts just because they look nice may not reflect a designer's original purpose. ||
 * ===Timeliness of the article's content:=== || The content within this article is current. Although published in 2005, this information touches on issues associated with typeface such as methods, personalities, and tone, which are still brought up today.

The article sites a wide variety of sources, most of which are dated in the 2000s. ||
 * ===How much this article's content agrees with what is found in other sources:=== || This article's content agrees strongly with similar content from other sources, such as Godman’s, //The 7 Essentials of Graphic Design// (How Design Books) and I Strizver’s //Type Rules!// (North Light Books).
 * These sources reveal that typeface is a very common topic of research because it relates to so many other fields outside of English, suggesting it is imperative to choose the appropriate typeface.
 * These other sources discuss the importance of choosing typeface based on document tone and the method of study. ||

Methodology Analysis

 * ===The problem the research addresses:=== || The author sees a need for research that looks for the features that contribute to a typeface's personality.

Additionally, the author sees a need for research that assists in developing a tool that technical communicators can use to gauge whether a typeface's personality is appropriate for a written document. || Do typefaces accessed similarly for a particular attribute have any anatomical features (i.e., physical characteristics) in common? ||
 * ===The research questions asked in this study are (verbatim, p. 295):=== || What personality attributes do various typefaces convey, according to the study participants' assessments?
 * ===Significance of the research problem and who might use the results:=== || If an effective method for assessing the personality of a typeface existed, technical document writers would have a way to choose the typeface personality that sets the desired tone for the documents they create.

In the long run, the author visualizes the creation of a system for typeface selection that is based on research rather than personal preference or "safety" derived from using familiar typefaces. || How typefaces have traditionally been seen to exhibit various personalities; How typefaces have "personalities" that help to generate feelings; How typefaces have been used as the focal point for readers' responses to text; When typefaces are appropriate for the message of a text. ||
 * ===Previous research, as reviewed in this article, has focused on:=== || How typefaces contribute to the visual language of documents;
 * ===The research method, tools, and participants:=== || To gather data, 64 undergraduate writing students were asked to analyze 15 typefaces and to rate those typefaces, on a scale of 1 to 7, for 10 different "personality attributes."

Two of those personality attributes, friendliness and professionalism, were then selected to analyze which of a typeface's physical characteristics contribute to expressing those attributes. The typefaces that rated highly as either friendly or professional were then assessed to see if they share similar physical features.

In order to "triangulate" the data collection process (i.e., get at the information from another direction), the author asked study participants to: To facilitate responses to the second and third items, a list of different types of printed communication was provided for the study participants to consider. ||
 * Explain their highest and lowest ratings;
 * List what kinds of documents they would expect to see each of the typefaces used in;
 * List what kinds of documents they would use the various typefaces in.
 * ===The presentation of the results:=== || A bar graph shows how each typeface was initially rated in terms of its expression of friendliness and professionalism.

Many graphics show the variety of physical characteristics seen in the five letterforms used to analyze each of the typefaces. A range of anatomical features for typefaces is discussed and includes the degree of roundness of letterform terminals, the degree of angle in the small letter "e" crossbar, the position of the capital J in relation to the baseline, and whether the letters "a" and "g" had single- or double-story construction. A discussion of what features characterized "friendliness" of typefaces was developed first. After the features of those typefaces were described, a similar discussion addressed what features characterized "professionalism" of typefaces. All of those features were then listed in a chart to emphasize the points that had been developed.

Finally, the author used her analysis of typeface characteristics to discuss the features of a typeface that was not included in the data-gathering survey. She described the overall personality that emerged based on that typeface's features and suggested what document types that typeface could be used for. ||
 * ===Critical concerns:=== || The author collected data by surveying 64 undergraduate writing students, which seems to be a sample of convenience rather than an actual representation of the population of technical writers.

The author cites the vast array of typefaces available, stating there are over 100,000 to choose from, as the reason why a selection system would be useful. However, the evaluation looked at the features of only 16 typefaces, and it is not clear how the 15 typefaces rated by the students were initially chosen. The author argues that a system for selecting typeface is needed so writers will no longer have to rely on preference or intuition when choosing typefaces for documents. However, the study centers on how students rated typefaces as exhibiting each of 10 predetermined attributes. This method seems no less subjective than using personal preference when choosing a typeface. ||
 * ===Strengths and weakness of the research:=== || The study explores a previously unexamined way to assess what factors serve to create a typeface's personality.

The author acknowledges the research is a "first step" in analyzing the personalities expressed by typefaces.

The author admits that only two of the typeface attributes surveyed were actually analyzed and that an analysis of the other eight attributes could reveal other significant characteristics that would enhance the understanding of typeface personality. ||
 * ===IRB approval:=== || Since some of the data collection involved human subjects who were also students of the University of Minnesota, where the author works, it is safe to conclude that some form of IRB approval was obtained.

Source: University of Minnesota IRB Web site: [|www.research.umn.edu/irb/guidance]. ||