Research in Technical Communication

The purpose of this cutting-edge collection of essays is threefold: first, it presents the principles of data collection and interpretation or the methodological distinctions of a particular method appropriate to technical communication research. Second, it discusses the foundational principles of the methodologies given the primary discipline in which they were created and applied. Finally, it reflects upon the process of importing and employing these methodologies into the research field of technical communication, and on how technical communication research has contributed to the development and application of these methodologies.

Written by many noted scholars in the field and presenting a wide range of research methods, Research in Technical Communication combines theory and practice. Both technical communicators and industry researchers who want to learn more about workplace research and methodologies will find it invaluable, as will beginning and advanced scholars, who will find much that is useful in its variety of subjects.

LAURA J. GURAK is Associate Professor and Director of the Internet Studies Center in the Rhetoric Department at the University of Minnesota, where she is also a Faculty Fellow in the Law School. A nationally recognized Internet researcher, she is the author of Persuasion and Privacy in Cyberspace: The Online Protests over Lotus MarketPlace and the Clipper Chip and Cyberliteracy: Navigating the Internet with Awareness. She has also authored two textbooks, edited a collection of essays, and has been published in journals including Technical Communication, Computers and Composition, and Rhetoric Review.

MARY M. LAY is Professor of Rhetoric and former Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Minnesota. She is the co-author of the second edition of Technical Communication, co-editor of Collaborative Writing in Industry: Investigation in Theory and Practice, and author of The Rhetoric of Midwifery: Power, Knowledge, and Gender. She is also co-editor of Technical Communication Quarterly, the official journal of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing, and past president of that association.