C M Thompson
Biographic Data
| ID | 38948 |
|---|---|
| NAME | C M Thompson |
| GIVEN NAMES | C M |
| FAMILY NAME | Thompson |
| SIGNATURE | THOMPSON C M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5946-7153 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 51 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1914 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The Communicative Disenfranchisement of Disabled Individuals During Healthcare Appointments
Hintz and Scharp’s explication of the theory of communicative (dis)enfranchisement describes how hegemonic ideologies are reified through talk. This paper approaches communicative disenfranchisement from a critical disability studies perspective to make visible the ways systemic ableism operates as a hegemonic ideology that harms disabled individuals. To do so, we employed Price’s theory of crip spacetime to illuminate how communicative disenfran…
Negotiating Multiple Cultures of Care
Given calls for greater attention to culture in interpersonal health communication research, we interviewed 29 South Asian women between the ages of 18 and 60 managing chronic health issues to explore culturally specific dilemmas in health-related talk within families. Guided by normative rhetorical theory, our findings narrate polysemic meanings of health as generational, communal, and personal. These meanings created dilemmas centered on what i…
“Everything Looks Normal”
This study examines how individuals with long COVID navigate illness experiences when faced with normal test results. Through qualitative analysis of 1,043 posts from r/covidlonghaulers between July 2020 and January 2021, we identified four key themes: overlapping diagnostic possibilities increase confusion, discordance in treatment plans, sustained uncertainty, and challenges to credibility. Our findings reveal how polysemic meanings of normal b…
(Re)making Scales
Dismissal of women’s health concerns is a discursive phenomenon with social and material consequences. A burgeoning literature documents how women experience dismissal through various forms of disenfranchising talk. Yet, women are not only subjected to disenfranchising talk; they are called to respond to it. Meaning, analyses of disenfranchisement should also examine efforts toward enfranchisement. One process by which scholars can study communic…
A Longitudinal Interview Study of People with Long Covid
Current estimates indicate around 6% of US adults have experienced long COVID symptoms. Given the novelty of both COVID and long COVID, those who continue to be ill after an initial SARS-CoV-2 infection have little precedence on which to rely when navigating the medical (e.g. diagnoses, treatment options), social (e.g. others’ reactions, isolation), and personal (e.g. roles, identities) sources of uncertainty that accompany the illness. In this s…
Healing Health Care Disparities
Grounded in communication models of cultural competence, this study reports on the development and testing of the first module in a larger virtual reality (VR) implicit bias training for physicians to help them better: (a) recognize implicit bias and its effects on communication, patients, and patient care; (b) identify their own implicit biases and exercise strategies for managing them; and (c) learn and practice communicating with BIPOC patient…
A Grounded Theory of Credibility Work and Illness
We make the communicative labor of illness credibility explicit by moving the concept of work into critical interpersonal theory to develop a grounded theory of credibility work . Synthesizing multi-disciplinary literature and drawing on interviews with 36 women in the United States whose health issues have been dismissed by health care providers, friends, and family, we forward a definition of credibility work, six postulates about its nature, a…
Heteronormativity as Hegemonic Ideology
The communicative labor of LGBTQ+ individuals to live authentically with/in families
Competing Cultural Discourses of GLP-1 Agonists
As GLP-1 medications become more available and FDA approved in a number of cases, discourses related to their use by individuals for purposes of weight loss and management permeate social life. Prominently, weight management is often positioned in society and researched as a private matter of individual choice, behavior, and responsibility. Relational dialectics theory posits culturally dominant discourses and marginalized discourses to be in con…
The Impact of Health Communication Research on Medical and Health Professional Education and Training
In this essay, we review how health communication scholarship has been translated into various communication skills trainings (CSTs), we present four case studies of how health communication research informed the development and implementation of specific CSTs, and we reflect on how we can productively define "impact" in looking back as well as looking forward within this line of research
Development and Initial Assessment of an Emotional Support Provision Training Intervention for Interpersonal Support Providers in the Context of Chronic Illness
This study reports on the development and pilot testing of an emotional support provision training intervention for interpersonal support providers to those with chronic illnesses. Using findings from a needs assessment in combination with existing theory and research, we created a training framework consisting of verbal person-centered message design, empathic listening, and communicated perspective-taking. Then, we recruited 282 individuals to …
Living with Long Covid
It is estimated that there are 65 million people globally - 19 million U.S. adults alone - who have long COVID, or persistent symptoms and conditions that continue or develop after an initial SARS-CoV-2 infection. Amidst their suffering and the ambiguity surrounding their health, people with long COVID engage processes of reintegrating from disruptions brought upon by their COVID-19 infection and its fallout, as well as the pandemic writ large. T…
Core and Catalyst Criteria Motivating CrossFit Athletes to Reveal or Conceal Their Non-Visible Health Conditions
Despite robust literature concerning the illness disclosure decision making process, it remains unclear how individuals choose to reveal and conceal non-visible health conditions in group exercise. At the intersection of non-visible illness management and group exercise, the purpose of this study is to apply communication privacy management theory (CPM) to better understand the core and catalyst criteria athletes with non-visible health condition…
An examination of mothers’ sensemaking of ‘mommy drinking culture’
Women’s Experiences of Health-Related Communicative Disenfranchisement
Women’s inequitable healthcare experiences are epistemic injustices by which women are discredited and harmed in their position as knowers of their health and their bodies. Drawing on the theory of communicative disenfranchisement (TCD), we sought to amplify voices of women experiencing communicative disenfranchisement (CD) and to unify their stories according to theoretical premises, namely, attention to power, material conditions, discourse, id…
Denying and Accepting a Family Member’s Illness
Doubt is a common, yet challenging form of uncertainty to have about another's illness. Although navigating illness uncertainty is a process of continual (re)appraisal and management, existing research narrowly examines windows of uncertainty experience. To illustrate how uncertainty management in the context of doubt is recursive, nonlinear, and ongoing, we apply a process approach to communication to uncertainty management theory. Drawing on in…
Testing a Model of Disclosure, Perceived Support Quality, and Well-Being in the College Student Mental Illness Context
Prominent disclosure models elucidate decisions to disclose health information, yet explanations for disclosure consequences remain underdeveloped. Drawing on Chaudoir and Fisher's disclosure process model, this study aims to advance understandings of how disclosure to a parent contributes to well-being for college students with mental illness. We tested a mediational model in which, at the within-person level, perceived support quality explains …
“I Want Them to Still Trust Me with Their Child’s Care”
Physicians in residency training experience high levels of medical uncertainty, yet they are often hesitant to discuss uncertainty with parents. Guided by the theory of motivated information management and a multiple goals perspective, this mixed-methods longitudinal study examines associations among residents' tolerance of and reactions to uncertainty, efficacy communicating about uncertainty, and perceptions of parents' trust in them as physici…
The Role of Interpersonal Communication in Mental Health Literacy Interventions for Young People
School-based mental health literacy (MHL) programs can increase knowledge, reduce stigma, and encourage help-seeking behaviors in school-aged children. Yet, MHL intervention effects are inconsistent and unsustainable over time, and scholars have called for more theoretical work to address these limitations. The purpose of this theoretical review is to investigate how theory is utilized in MHL interventions, explore the interpersonal communication…
People who help people
Social support during an ongoing illness has been shown to be beneficial for both the provider and the receiver, but people often struggle with offering effective, appropriate support. There is a lack of communication‐focused training not specifically tied to caregiving or training that is designed for all social network members of a person experiencing a chronic illness, which we call interpersonal support providers (ISPs). We conducted a concur…
Further examination of the support quandary hypothesis
This study further examines a difficult experience for support providers in close relationships that we are calling the social support quandary hypothesis: Mental illness uncertainty simultaneously increases fear/anxiety and decreases supportive communication efficacy. In turn, fear/anxiety motivates support provision, but supportive communication efficacy is needed to provide support and for support to be of quality. Undergraduate students (N = …
Why Is It Difficult for Social Network Members to Support People Living with Mental Illnesses
For people living with mental illness, support from social network members, including family, romantic partners, and friends, is critical but often inadequate. However, robust theoretical explanations for why it might it be difficult to support people living with mental illness are lacking. We assessed an appraisal-based model of uncertainty, hypothesizing that fear and anxiety and supportive communication efficacy mediate the association between…
An Examination of How People Appraise and Manage Health-Related Financial Uncertainty
While health care is one of the largest stressors across all incomes and political affiliations, it is unclear how people with health-related financial uncertainty appraise and manage this ambiguity. Using the lens of Uncertainty Management Theory (UMT) and a thematic analysis of semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 17 individuals facing financial and health struggles, we uncovered how intersecting financial and medical uncertainty exacerbat…
Setting the Agenda
The exploration of discourse has been enormously generative to critical family communication scholarship (CFC), as scholars have both studied discourse in and of families as well as theorized about what discourse is and does. The heuristic value of discourse to CFC moves us to offer an agenda for future CFC research that asks family communication scholars to theoretically expand beyond discourse. Drawing on the momentum of CFC work grounded in di…
Confirmation in Couples' Communication About Weight Management
Using confirmation theory, this study investigated how romantic couples' (N = 100) accepting and challenging communication was associated with several weight management (WM) outcomes (i.e., partners' general effectiveness in motivating each other to enact healthy behaviors, productivity of WM conversations, and diet and exercise behaviors). Actor–partner interdependence model analyses showed that acceptance and challenge from partners simultaneou…
Crying wolf
We employed a critical approach to study uncertainty, identifying and historicizing the cultural discourses implicated in individuals' contestations of family members' health complaints. We drew upon the broader discourse typically termed the Enlightenment Subject, which imagines individuals as rational, self-regulating, self-knowing, and transcendental beings. Through interpretive thematic and critical analyses of interview data with 32 individu…
Understanding how adolescents and young adults with cancer talk about needs in online and face-to-face support groups
We compared adolescent and young adult cancer patient and survivor language between mediated and face-to-face support communities in order to understand how the use of certain words frame conversations about family, friends, health, work, achievement, and leisure. We analyzed transcripts from an online discussion board ( N = 360) and face-to-face support group ( N = 569) for adolescent and young adults using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, a w…
Setting the Agenda
The exploration of discourse has been enormously generative to critical family communication scholarship (CFC), as scholars have both studied discourse in and of families as well as theorized about what discourse is and does. The heuristic value of discourse to CFC moves us to offer an agenda for future CFC research that asks family communication scholars to theoretically expand beyond discourse. Drawing on the momentum of CFC work grounded in di…
I changed, I had to realize that I was wrong
Doubt that a family member's health issues are real, severe, or even possible entwines some of the most challenging aspects of medical, personal, and social uncertainty. Although several studies have examined doubt, this investigation focuses on how doubt evolves and foregrounds the identity implications of uncertainty. Guided by Communication Theory of Identity (CTI), the purpose of this study was to explore the identity gaps people experience a…
Emerging adult confidants’ judgments of parental openness
Research on openness and disclosure has prioritized the perspectives of disclosers and largely omitted the experiences of confidants. In particular, we contend that it is important to learn more about how emerging adult (EA) confidants perceive parental disclosure episodes and how parental openness manifests in ways that lead to increased intimacy. In Study One, participants’ open-ended descriptions of parental disclosures were thematically analy…
Dilemmas Managing Doubt about Family Members’ Health Complaints
Uncertainty is inherent to the illness experience; for those who are not ill themselves, the inability to directly access another person’s embodied experiences can heighten feelings of uncertainty. Doubt about the extent to which others are ill is a common and consequential form of partner uncertainty that we focus on in this study. Guided by Goldsmith’s (2001, 2004, 2016) normative framework, we analyzed data from interviews with 32 individuals …
Understanding” as Support for Emerging Adults Whose Parents Have Chronic Health Conditions
To better understand the “chronic burden of care” in the United States, we focused on an underrepresented demographic of youth caregivers in families, emerging adults (EAs). EAs are a newly recognized population of youth, 18–25 years of age, who are developmentally between adolescence and young adulthood. Guided by the life span communication perspective, we interviewed 98 EAs (30 males and 68 females, M age = 19.09, SD = 1.72) about their experi…
The communicative labor of LGBTQ+ individuals to live authentically with/in families
What happens when the standard for openness goes unmet in romantic relationships? Analyses of stress, coping, and relational consequences
The current investigation advances existing research by exploring the stress elicited when individuals perceive their standard for openness has been unmet, identifying the coping strategies individuals engage in when faced with this stress, and assessing the consequences of individuals' coping efforts on relational quality. Data were gathered from 205 individuals in newly dating relationships. Analyses revealed that punishing, exiting, reframing,…
Family Communication and Body Dissatisfaction among Young Adult Females
Although the link between family-of-origin environments and body dissatisfaction among daughters is well-documented, the mechanisms through which family factors influence daughters’ body image concerns have been relatively unexplored. To address this gap, we examine the association between parental communication and young adult females’ body dissatisfaction as mediated by social competence. Female college students (N = 375; M age = 20.19) partici…
General Economic History of the Dominion, 1867-1912
General Economic History of the Dominion, 1867–1912. By Oscar D. Skelton, professor of political science, Queen's University. [Reprinted from: Canada and Its Provinces. A History of the Canadian People and their Institutions by One Hundred Associates.] (Toronto: The Publishers' Association, of Canada Limited, 1913. 95–274 p.) C. M. Thompson C. M. Thompson Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American…
Immigration
Immigration. A World Movement and its American Significance. By Henry Pratt Fairchild. New York: The Macmillan Company, Immigration and Labor. The Economic Aspects of European Immigration to the United States By Isaac A. Hourwich. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons and The Immigrant Invasion. By Frank Julian Warne. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company C. M. Thompson C. M. Thompson Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Jo…
Readings in the Economic History of the United States
A History of American Philosophy
Confirmation in Couples' Communication About Weight Management
Using confirmation theory, this study investigated how romantic couples' (N = 100) accepting and challenging communication was associated with several weight management (WM) outcomes (i.e., partners' general effectiveness in motivating each other to enact healthy behaviors, productivity of WM conversations, and diet and exercise behaviors). Actor–partner interdependence model analyses showed that acceptance and challenge from partners simultaneou…
Family Communication and Body Dissatisfaction among Young Adult Females
Although the link between family-of-origin environments and body dissatisfaction among daughters is well-documented, the mechanisms through which family factors influence daughters’ body image concerns have been relatively unexplored. To address this gap, we examine the association between parental communication and young adult females’ body dissatisfaction as mediated by social competence. Female college students (N = 375; M age = 20.19) partici…
Emerging adult confidants’ judgments of parental openness
Research on openness and disclosure has prioritized the perspectives of disclosers and largely omitted the experiences of confidants. In particular, we contend that it is important to learn more about how emerging adult (EA) confidants perceive parental disclosure episodes and how parental openness manifests in ways that lead to increased intimacy. In Study One, participants’ open-ended descriptions of parental disclosures were thematically analy…
Understanding how adolescents and young adults with cancer talk about needs in online and face-to-face support groups
We compared adolescent and young adult cancer patient and survivor language between mediated and face-to-face support communities in order to understand how the use of certain words frame conversations about family, friends, health, work, achievement, and leisure. We analyzed transcripts from an online discussion board ( N = 360) and face-to-face support group ( N = 569) for adolescent and young adults using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, a w…
What happens when the standard for openness goes unmet in romantic relationships? Analyses of stress, coping, and relational consequences
The current investigation advances existing research by exploring the stress elicited when individuals perceive their standard for openness has been unmet, identifying the coping strategies individuals engage in when faced with this stress, and assessing the consequences of individuals' coping efforts on relational quality. Data were gathered from 205 individuals in newly dating relationships. Analyses revealed that punishing, exiting, reframing,…
Understanding” as Support for Emerging Adults Whose Parents Have Chronic Health Conditions
To better understand the “chronic burden of care” in the United States, we focused on an underrepresented demographic of youth caregivers in families, emerging adults (EAs). EAs are a newly recognized population of youth, 18–25 years of age, who are developmentally between adolescence and young adulthood. Guided by the life span communication perspective, we interviewed 98 EAs (30 males and 68 females, M age = 19.09, SD = 1.72) about their experi…
“I Don’t Claim to Be the World’s Foremost Expert, But . . . ”
To understand how individuals come to “know” that their family members are not experiencing their health issues as severely as they claim, we interviewed 32 individuals (nine men and 23 women, M age = 35.28 years, SD = 9.91 years) about a family member who they believe falsifies or exaggerates his or her health condition(s). Our analyses illuminate two interlinked processes of knowledge construction: (a) developing evidentiary standards and (b) g…
Social network members' responses to friends' breakup false alarms
Social networks influence romantic relationships through friends' support or lack of support of the union. However, the consequences of friends repeatedly telling other friends their relationship was going to end but failing to actually terminate the relationship are unclear. Guided by the false alarm effect (FAE), and data from both student ( N = 273) and noncollege ( N = 226) samples, it was found that breakup false alarms were associated with …
Crying wolf
We employed a critical approach to study uncertainty, identifying and historicizing the cultural discourses implicated in individuals' contestations of family members' health complaints. We drew upon the broader discourse typically termed the Enlightenment Subject, which imagines individuals as rational, self-regulating, self-knowing, and transcendental beings. Through interpretive thematic and critical analyses of interview data with 32 individu…
Dilemmas Managing Doubt about Family Members’ Health Complaints
Uncertainty is inherent to the illness experience; for those who are not ill themselves, the inability to directly access another person’s embodied experiences can heighten feelings of uncertainty. Doubt about the extent to which others are ill is a common and consequential form of partner uncertainty that we focus on in this study. Guided by Goldsmith’s (2001, 2004, 2016) normative framework, we analyzed data from interviews with 32 individuals …
Why Is It Difficult for Social Network Members to Support People Living with Mental Illnesses
For people living with mental illness, support from social network members, including family, romantic partners, and friends, is critical but often inadequate. However, robust theoretical explanations for why it might it be difficult to support people living with mental illness are lacking. We assessed an appraisal-based model of uncertainty, hypothesizing that fear and anxiety and supportive communication efficacy mediate the association between…
An Examination of How People Appraise and Manage Health-Related Financial Uncertainty
While health care is one of the largest stressors across all incomes and political affiliations, it is unclear how people with health-related financial uncertainty appraise and manage this ambiguity. Using the lens of Uncertainty Management Theory (UMT) and a thematic analysis of semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 17 individuals facing financial and health struggles, we uncovered how intersecting financial and medical uncertainty exacerbat…
Setting the Agenda
The exploration of discourse has been enormously generative to critical family communication scholarship (CFC), as scholars have both studied discourse in and of families as well as theorized about what discourse is and does. The heuristic value of discourse to CFC moves us to offer an agenda for future CFC research that asks family communication scholars to theoretically expand beyond discourse. Drawing on the momentum of CFC work grounded in di…
I changed, I had to realize that I was wrong
Doubt that a family member's health issues are real, severe, or even possible entwines some of the most challenging aspects of medical, personal, and social uncertainty. Although several studies have examined doubt, this investigation focuses on how doubt evolves and foregrounds the identity implications of uncertainty. Guided by Communication Theory of Identity (CTI), the purpose of this study was to explore the identity gaps people experience a…
Women’s Experiences of Health-Related Communicative Disenfranchisement
Women’s inequitable healthcare experiences are epistemic injustices by which women are discredited and harmed in their position as knowers of their health and their bodies. Drawing on the theory of communicative disenfranchisement (TCD), we sought to amplify voices of women experiencing communicative disenfranchisement (CD) and to unify their stories according to theoretical premises, namely, attention to power, material conditions, discourse, id…
Denying and Accepting a Family Member’s Illness
Doubt is a common, yet challenging form of uncertainty to have about another's illness. Although navigating illness uncertainty is a process of continual (re)appraisal and management, existing research narrowly examines windows of uncertainty experience. To illustrate how uncertainty management in the context of doubt is recursive, nonlinear, and ongoing, we apply a process approach to communication to uncertainty management theory. Drawing on in…
Testing a Model of Disclosure, Perceived Support Quality, and Well-Being in the College Student Mental Illness Context
Prominent disclosure models elucidate decisions to disclose health information, yet explanations for disclosure consequences remain underdeveloped. Drawing on Chaudoir and Fisher's disclosure process model, this study aims to advance understandings of how disclosure to a parent contributes to well-being for college students with mental illness. We tested a mediational model in which, at the within-person level, perceived support quality explains …
“I Want Them to Still Trust Me with Their Child’s Care”
Physicians in residency training experience high levels of medical uncertainty, yet they are often hesitant to discuss uncertainty with parents. Guided by the theory of motivated information management and a multiple goals perspective, this mixed-methods longitudinal study examines associations among residents' tolerance of and reactions to uncertainty, efficacy communicating about uncertainty, and perceptions of parents' trust in them as physici…
The Role of Interpersonal Communication in Mental Health Literacy Interventions for Young People
School-based mental health literacy (MHL) programs can increase knowledge, reduce stigma, and encourage help-seeking behaviors in school-aged children. Yet, MHL intervention effects are inconsistent and unsustainable over time, and scholars have called for more theoretical work to address these limitations. The purpose of this theoretical review is to investigate how theory is utilized in MHL interventions, explore the interpersonal communication…
People who help people
Social support during an ongoing illness has been shown to be beneficial for both the provider and the receiver, but people often struggle with offering effective, appropriate support. There is a lack of communication‐focused training not specifically tied to caregiving or training that is designed for all social network members of a person experiencing a chronic illness, which we call interpersonal support providers (ISPs). We conducted a concur…
Further examination of the support quandary hypothesis
This study further examines a difficult experience for support providers in close relationships that we are calling the social support quandary hypothesis: Mental illness uncertainty simultaneously increases fear/anxiety and decreases supportive communication efficacy. In turn, fear/anxiety motivates support provision, but supportive communication efficacy is needed to provide support and for support to be of quality. Undergraduate students (N = …
Psychology (30 works) · Social Psychology (23 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Medicine (11 works) · Political science (10 works) · Psychiatry (10 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Psychotherapist (9 works) · Attachment and Relationship Dynamics (8 works)