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Despite the number of publications about auditing organizational communication, scholars have paid little attention to the reliability and validity of individual audit techniques. This study examines the merits and restrictions of the Communication Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ) by comparing CSQ results with results gathered with the critical incident technique. The authors used both instruments to assess the quality of internal communication within three organizations. They found that the two techniques converge and that the CSQ appears to have criterion-related validity. However, the CSQ fails to explicitly address issues of decision making, top-down and bottom-up communication, responsibilities, and the extent to which organizations keep rules and agreements. The authors conclude that the CSQ is an appropriate instrument for gaining overall insights into the way employees evaluate aspects of organizational communication but that the method is less suitable for diagnosing specific communication problems and formulating recommendations.
Keywords: Communication Satisfaction Questionnaire; critical incident technique; communication audit; validity
Communication audits typically evaluate an organization's communication system and provide the organization with valuable information about its communicative strengths and weaknesses (Goldhaber, 1993; Goldhaber & Rogers, 1979; Hargie & Tourish, 2000). Although the word audit may suggest otherwise, the term actually covers a wide variety of data-collection techniques such as questionnaires, interviews, diary studies, network analysis, ECCO-analysis, and the critical incident technique (CIT). Various handbooks describe these data-collection techniques in detail (e.g., Booth, 1986, 1988; Downs, 1988; Downs & Adrian, 2004; Hamilton, 1987; Hargie & Tourish, 2000). However, despite the number of publications about auditing organizational communication, scholars have paid little attention to the methodological strengths and weaknesses of the specific data-collection techniques involved. Publications about communication audits usually focus on overall audit results, which makes it hard to distinguish the contribution of each individual technique (e.g., Tourish & Hargie, 1998; Tourish & Robson, 2003). Moreover, handbooks and case studies dominate the literature on communication audits. Empirical research into the reliability and validity of specific communication audit techniques is limited, and we believe that more research is needed to isolate and compare the contribution of individual audit techniques.
We therefore sought to evaluate the merits and restrictions of one of the most prominent audit techniques, the Communication Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ). For this evaluation, we compared the CSQ and the CIT....