Establishing the construct of workplace written communication

Abstract

This paper explores our attempt to determine the construct of workplace written communication through a study involving graduating students and workplace professionals. Information regarding written tasks, minimum standards and quality expected from new graduate employees were gathered through interviews of human resource personnel from various fie lds. Based on the information gathered, a test of written communication was designed and administered to a group of sixty graduating students. The end products were collected, from which five were selected, believed to be representative of the product of the ‘good’, ‘satisfactory’, ‘modest’, ‘weak’ and ‘very weak’ writers. The scripts were then shown to the human resource personnel for assessment. Results were analysed to establish the different categories of criteria applied by the professionals in their assessment. From the analysis, the construct of workplace written communication was devised and subjected to validation.