Relational communication: A comparison of coding systems

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between the relational communication coding systems of Rogers and Farace and Ellis et al. Though these category schemes are based on the same theoretical foundation and claim to measure the same phenomenon, the correspondence between the two schemes was found to be poor. Results indicated that the two systems differentially distributed control codes and that on an act by act basis, inter‐scheme agreement was weak. This lack of correspondence was due in large part to a unitizing discrepancy and a pragmatic‐syntactic discrepancy between the schemes. Until researchers reexamine these and other coding discrepancies conceptually and empirically, the prospect of integrating relational communication research across coding systems appears bleak.