The Benefits of Strategies for Dealing with Shyness for Journalism Students
Ronald J. Allman II
© 2003
The Benefits of Strategies for Journalism Students Dealing with Shyness
Abstract
Shy journalism students, when given strategies to overcome anxiety and self-consciousness, write stories with more sources, but this was not a significant increase and is a short-term effect. Having strategies to deal with shyness does not significantly affect the length of sentences in quotes, but there is a noticeable short-term increase. No sustained increase in the number of sources or length of quotes was found. The data does not support the increases being attributed to the shyness strategies. Support for the differences could only be show anecdotally.
The Benefits of Strategies for Journalism Students Dealing with Shyness
One of the barriers student journalists may face when reporting on a story is shyness. It is estimated that approximately 40 percent of all students claim to be shy (Carducci & Stein, 1988). This is especially true when students have to interact with people in authority, which is what reporters are required to do in order to get quality information needed for a story.
If students are aware of their shyness and are given strategies to cope with the feelings of anxiety and fear, journalism students should be able to report more effectively.
Professor Bernardo Carducci, director of the Shyness Research Institute at Indiana University Southeast and author of “Shyness: A Bold New Approach: Managing Your Shyness at Work,” “Making Small Talk,” “Navigating Social Situations,” and “Parenting a Shy Child,” has developed strategies to help students recognize their shyness and manage the associated feelings (Carducci, 1996).
In the fall semester 1999, Carducci gave a lecture on these strategies to the staff of Indiana University Southeast’s student newspaper, The Horizon. If these strategies were effective, this newspaper staff would write stories with more sources and more quotes than before the strategies were introduced. Being able to cope with shyness would allow the student reporters to talk to more people, especially those in authority, and ask them more questions. With the shyness barrier lowered, there should be an increase in sources and length of quotes.
Strategies
The Shyness Research Institute is an organization for the promotion of the study of shyness. Established in 1997, the institute is the only university affiliated shyness research organization. Carducci’s lecture on strategies to deal with shyness was attended by 16 students and the two advisers of the newspaper.
Carducci first presented three strategies that do not work in coping with shyness. The first bad strategy is “forced extroversion.” Those who use this strategy enter social and business situations hoping that by placing themselves in situations where they are shy will be enough to break through the fear and anxiety. This strategy falls short because it relies on others to overcome the barrier created by the shy person.
The second bad strategy is “liquid extroversion,” namely drinking in order to overcome shyness. Liquid extroversion also includes self-medicating and taking drugs. This strategy masks the anxiety and does not help the shy person know what to say in a situation. This strategy also inhibits creativity.
The third bad strategy is “electronic extroversion.” Shy individuals use the Internet to deal with shyness. A shy journalist may use e-mail instead of face-to-face interviews when using this strategy. Proximity is a key factor in this strategy. Those who use the Internet to interview have time to craft questions and responses. This strategy falls short due to credibility and honesty of those online. Internet communication via e-mail is not in real time, not allowing true reactions and follow up conversation.
The biggest problems with shyness are in making contact and developing intimacy. This is true in the workplace and at school.
To cope with shyness, students need to realize that there is nothing wrong with being shy. To be effective as reporters, student journalists need to learn how to approach sources and initiate conversations.
The first effective strategy for journalists dealing with shyness is using the time before the interview to set the stage for the actual interview. This allows the source to warm up to the reporter. This makes the source less self-conscious when the actual interview takes place.
During the pre-interview, the journalist can engage in small talk to help the source and him warm up to each other. This creates a sense of intimacy. Once intimacy is initiated, shyness no longer plays a factor.
Small talk is not a natural ability – it is a skill that needs to be developed. Small talk can consist of setting talk, personal introduction, pre-topical exploration and post-topical exploration. Setting talk includes conversation about the surroundings, the weather and the shared environment. Personal introduction is stating who you are and what you do. This can be prepared beforehand. This introduction should also be extended beyond name and title so this elaboration can act as a springboard for further conversation. Pre-topical exploration is presenting a subject for conversation. If there is no response, the shy person should simply try a new subject and not take the rejection of the topic personally. This is a type of social reconnaissance, which can also be planned out in advance. Post-topical elaboration involves extending, expanding or elaborating on already established subjects.
When sources are less self-conscious, they are more likely to make longer and more comments. They will also feel they have time to think about the topic about which they are being questioned.
The second effective strategy is being prepared. Being prepared for a situation lowers anxiety. When a situation presents itself, being prepared allows a shy person to already know how to deal with it. A journalist should go into an interview having already done background research. A journalist should also prepare questions in advance of the interview.
The third effective strategy is letting the source be in familiar surroundings. This allows the source feel more comfortable and makes the interview less confrontational. When a source is in his own territory, it allows for intimacy to be established, making the source and the journalist less anxious.
Carducci also suggested the student journalists should be kind and not try to be controlling.
Hypotheses
It is hypothesized that given strategies to overcome shyness when reporting, student journalists should produce stories with more sentences in quotes and a greater number of sources. The independent variable in this study is the introduction of the three effective strategies as presented by Carducci.
Method
To determine if the strategies given to the student journalists had an effect on the length of quotes and number of sources, a content analysis was performed. The number of sources and the number of sentences in a quote in student-produced stories were counted.
In the experimental group, the stories analyzed were taken from the issues of the newspaper immediately before the shyness lecture, immediately after the lecture and two weeks after the lecture. If presenting the strategies to overcome shyness had an effect, there would be an increase in the number of sources and number of sentences in quotes between the stories immediately before the lecture and immediately after the lecture. A sustained effect would be evident by an increase between the stories immediately before the lecture and two weeks after the lecture.
To control for the increase in skill, education, maturation and experience of the student journalists, the same content analysis was performed on stories written for the same issues from the previous year. If the independent variable of the shyness strategies was the cause for an increase in sources and number of sentences in quotes, there would be a significant difference between the stories written the year in which the strategies were presented and the year in which they were not.
Data
In the year in which the shyness strategies were presented, 10 stories were written in the issue immediately before the shyness lecture. There was an average 1.8 sources per story, and an average of 5.1 sentences in quotes per story. The pervious year was similar with 13 stories being written with an average of 1.5 sources and 5 sentences in quotes. A t-test was performed to see if there was a difference between the two years. There was no significant difference between the two years. The number of sources between the two years produced a t-score of .4979, not significant with p<.05. The number of sentences in quotes between the years produced a t-score of .9446, not significant with p<.05.
In the year in which the shyness strategies were presented, 10 stories were written immediately after the shyness lecture. The average number of sources in these stories increased from before the lecture, to 2.2 sources per story, up from 1.8. This increase between the issue before the lecture and immediately after was not significant, with a calculated t-score of .3978, which was not significant with p<.05. Any effect the shyness strategies had on the number of sources was small.
The number of sentences in quotes also increased slightly between the issue before the lecture and after. The average number of sentences in quotes increased to 5.4 from 5.1 per story. This was also not a significant increase, with a t-score of .8172 and p<.05. Any presumed effect of the independent variable was small and not significant.
The increase in the number of sources and the number of sentences in quotes cannot be attributed to the independent variable. There was a significant difference in the number of sources between the stories by the students who had heard the shyness lecture and those of the year before, but the increase favored the students who did not have the shyness strategies. The previous year, the students produced 13 stories with an average 3.5 sources per story, as opposed to 2.2 from the experimental group. This difference was significant, with t=.0126 and p<.05.
There was also a difference between the experimental year and the year before in the number of sentences in quotes, again favoring the control year. The control group had an average of 7.75 sentences per story as opposed to 5.4 of the experimental group. This difference is not significant, with t=.3285 and p<.05.
Any sustained effect of the shyness strategies was not found. The experimental group produced 11 stories two weeks after the shyness lecture. These stories had an average of 2.455 sources and 6.636 sentences in quotes. Both are an increase from the stories before the shyness lecture, but not significant. The difference in the number of sources produced a t=.2503, and the difference in the number of sentences in quotes produced a t=.4906. Both were not significant with p<.05. The control group produced 8 stories with an average of three sources and 5.625 sentences in quotes in the same issue the previous year. The difference between the experimental group and the control group for the later issues were not significant. The difference between the number of sources produced a t-score of .4355 with p<.05, with the difference favoring the control group. The difference between the number of sentences in quotes per story produced a t-score of .6867 with p<.05, with the difference favoring the experimental group.
The control group did show a significant increase in the number of sources between the issue evaluated for comparison with the stories written before the shyness lecture and the issue evaluated for comparison with the stories written immediately after the lecture. The number of sources increased from 1.5 per story to 3.5 per story, a significant increase with t=.0001 and p<.05. The experimental year showed an increase, too, but not a significant one. The control group also showed a significant increase in the number of sources between the issue evaluated for comparison with the stories written before the shyness lecture and the issue evaluated for comparison with the stories written two weeks after the shyness lecture. The number of sources increase from 1.5 per story to 3, which produces a calculated t=.0151 with p<.05, which is significant.
Results
The hypotheses that there would be an increase in the number of sources and in the number of sentences in quotes after shyness strategies were given to student journalists were not supported. The increase seen was not significant and could not be attributed to the shyness strategies when compared to the control group. The shyness strategies also did not show a significant sustained effect on the number of sources and number of sentences in quotes of stories. The data shows that the shyness strategies may have negatively influenced the number of sources in a story.
Conclusions
The student journalists were asked if they felt the lecture on strategies to overcome shyness given by Carducci was helpful. All of the student journalists responded positively to the statement. Some suggested that the lecture be given each semester because they found the strategies helpful. All of the students journalists said they felt the strategies helped them talk to sources and report on stories.
This anecdotal evidence is not supported by the content analysis. This raises the question of problems with the quasi-experimental study. For the anecdotal evidence and the analysis of the data to both be true, this study had to have had intervening variables that were not accounted for.
One intervening variable may have been differences in the student journalists in the control and experimental groups. Although both groups had the same instructors, the control group may have had student who were more experienced or skilled at reporting.
The issue used to control for the stories before the shyness lecture had stories with a small number of sources, 1.5 per story, and a small number of sentences in quotes, 5 per story. Although this was not significantly different from the experimental group, the numbers greatly increased in the other issued used for comparison. Perhaps there was some environmental factor during that time frame that caused the increase in the control group.
The small sample size may also have affected the results of this student. An average of 10.8 stories per issue in both the control and experimental groups is not a large sample. This experiment should be repeated with a larger sample to see if sample size had an effect on the outcome.
The length of quotes could have been operationalized differently. Instead of using the number of sentences in quotes, the number of words in quotes could be used. This may be a more accurate way to determine quote length.
The student journalists in this study were not asked if they felt they were shy or not. Not only should this question have been asked, but also a shyness profile test should have been administered to the students to determine their shyness. Even though about 40 percent of students are shy, these groups of student journalists may have been different from this average.
This study does not allow for separate analysis of the three strategies. Perhaps one strategy is more helpful than the others to the student journalist. Another study show be designed and conducted to test each of these strategies and their effectiveness.
The shyness lecture may have had the opposite effect on the student journalists. By being made aware of shyness in their lives, the student journalists may have become more self-conscious. The data does support this. Since the control group showed a positive significant difference in the number of sources when compared to the stories done immediately after the shyness lecture, being made aware of shyness decreases the number of sources, at least in this study.
This study should be revised as suggested above and redone. If shyness is a factor in inhibiting student journalists from performing at their best, this needs to be shown and a way to overcome shyness needs to be found.
References
Carducci, B.J. & Stein, N. (1988, April) The Personal and Situational Pervasiveness of
Shyness in College Students: A Nine-Year Comparison. Poster
presentation at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Psychological
Association,
Carducci, B.J. (2000, April) “Shyness: A Bold New Approach: Managing Your Shyness at Work, Making Small Talk, Navigating Social Situations, Parenting a Shy Child” Perennial.
Carducci, B.J., “Fighting shyness with shyness: An exercise in survey methodology and self-awareness.” Teaching of Psychology, Dec 96, Vol. 23 Issue 4, p241, 3p