Heather J Carmack
Biographic Data
| ID | 98623 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Heather J Carmack |
| GIVEN NAMES | Heather J |
| FAMILY NAME | Carmack |
| SIGNATURE | CARMACK H J |
| AFFILIATIONS | James Madison University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5520-3951 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 31 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Thematic and Scholarly Trajectories in the Journal Health Communication
As health communication grapples with urgent challenges, including the politicization of health issues, global public health crises, and accelerating technological change, there is a growing need to understand how the field has evolved and where it is heading. Existing studies have laid important groundwork in analyzing Health Communication’s content and influence. Building on that work, this study offers a longitudinal perspective that captures …
The Role of Perceived Clinician Trust, Communication Apprehension with Providers, and Patients’ Sociodemographic Factors in Patients’ Willingness to Communicate with Primary Care Clinicians
Patients’ trust in their providers is a key indicator in determining their satisfaction with care and communication with their providers. Guided by the relationship-centered care framework, the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of patients’ perceptions of clinician trust, patient sociodemographic factors, and communication apprehension with providers on patients’ willingness to communicate with their primary care clinicians. Particip…
Journalistic framing of medical errors in newspaper coverage, 2010–2019
Belonging, Affirmation, Safety, and Efficacy (Base): An Integrative Model for Shame Resilience, Social Support, and Humor in r/hemorrhoid
The present study sought to understand how participants in r/hemorrhoid used three coping strategies to improve their health and wellbeing. Drawing upon Shame Resilience Theory (SRT), the typology of social support, and the classification of humor styles, a theory-driven approach to qualitative analysis resulted in the identification of the following themes: Belongingness (building authentic connections with others), Affirmation (asserting the va…
It’s Your Whole Life: ” Navigating Identity and Mental Health in Life after Sports
Retirement from sport can be one of the most difficult transitions for athletes who must cope with the loss of athlete identity in redefining their purpose outside of sports. Prior research has indicated the life after sports phase can pose mental health challenges in terms of identity crisis, depression, and anxiety for former athletes who cannot successfully navigate this transition. Guided by the Meaning Making Model, the following qualitative…
Bearing Witness to Joy and Sorrow: Narrative Medicine and Reproductive Endocrinologist and Infertility (REI) Providers’ Journeys in Infertility Treatment
This study examines providers' perceptions of provider-patient communication in reproductive endocrinology and infertility (REI) practices. Grounded in narrative medicine, we interviewed six REI providers about their experiences providing fertility care. REI providers crafted a narrative of bearing witness by (1) situating personal and professional self in REI narratives, (2) sharing news as important medical moments, and (3) cultivating affiliat…
Crypt Keeper That She Is”: Mariah Bell and the Media Framing of Age in the 2022 U.S. National Figure Skating Championships
In 2022, Mariah Bell won the U.S. National Figure Skating Championship in women’s singles. Media coverage of her win and subsequent appointment to the U.S. Olympic figure skating team did not center on her performance; rather journalists primarily focused on the fact that Bell was the oldest woman to win a U.S. national title since 1927 and the oldest woman to compete in figure skating for the U.S. since 1928. The purpose of this paper was to ana…
Preparing the Next Generation of Teachers Inappropriately: When Introductory Course Directors Engage in Misbehaviors
This study explores graduate teaching assistants’ experiences of perceived introductory course director misbehaviors. The investigation situates these experiences in the larger organizational dissent conversation–a heuristic that helps to frame how these perceived misbehaviors impact graduate teaching assistants’ understanding of their current and future work relationships with course directors. Participants (N = 55) were graduate teaching assist…
Disclosure Catalysts in Student Disclosures of Personal Health Information to College Instructors
College students often struggle with the decision to disclose personal health information to their instructors. Students have to weigh the benefits and risks of disclosing personal health information to their instructors. Guided by Communication Privacy Management Theory, this study examined the motivating factors that contribute to students’ disclosure of personal health information to their instructors. Undergraduate students (N = 52) participa…
Contradictions and Predicaments in Instructors’ Boundary Negotiations of Students’ Health Disclosures
Students often disclose personal health information to their instructors for a variety of reasons. This puts instructors in an awkward position where they must negotiate the students' disclosure and what to do with the information. The authors conducted in-depth individual interviews with 23 university professors and identified three recurring tensions in the ways in which participants discussed their responses and actions based on student health…
Loss, Meaning-Making, and Coping After the 2016 Presidential Election
Hillary Rodham Clinton was heralded by news outlets and political pundits as the clear frontrunner and expected winner of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Her election loss to Republican Donald Trump was not only surprising, for many voters, it was devastating. Guided by the death studies literature about meaning-making after a loss, the purpose of this study was to explore how voters who were disappointed by the results of the election made …
Unexpected Negative Participant Responses and Researcher Safety: “Fuck Your Survey and Your Safe Space, Trigger Warning Bullshit”
In this article, the authors revisit their experiences analyzing open-ended responses to an online questionnaire about the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. This piece initiates the discussion about the role of participant ethics in studies. People who did not fit the research eligibility requirements participated in the study and contributed vile remarks about the questionnaire and the authors. In addition to claiming the questionnaire protocol w…
Catching feelings: Exploring commitment (un)readiness in emerging adulthood
This exploratory study investigates how emerging adults (EAs) experience catching feelings. Applying the Stages of Change Model and Relational Receptivity Theory, this study investigates how EAs understand the cognitive and behavior changes leading up to commitment and how they process precontemplation surrounding catching feelings. Using focus group interviews, collegiate EAs ( N = 17) define catching feelings as the unintentional, unexpected, a…
Communication Apprehension About Death, Religious Group Affiliation, and Religiosity: Predictors of Organ and Body Donation Decisions
Communication willingness has previously been identified as an important communication factor in influencing individuals' decisions to become an organ donor. Missing from this conversation is the role of communication apprehension about death and its impact on donation decisions. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between communication apprehension about death, religiosity, religious affiliation, and donation decisions. Th…
Development and Validation of the Communication Apprehension About Death Scale
Two studies ( N = 621) were conducted to develop and initially validate the Communication Apprehension About Death Scale (CADS). In Study 1, 302 general public participants completed a preliminary list of 66 items. An exploratory factor analysis identified two distinct dimensions of communication apprehension about death: communication anxiety and communication avoidance. A different group of participants ( n = 319) participated in Study 2. Parti…
Narrativizing Nursing Students’ Experiences With Medical Errors During Clinicals
The ways providers story their mistake experiences help to explain how providers understand medical errors and how they communicate about those errors. Communication scholars have slowly begun to explore the communicative nature of medical error experiences, with communication research becoming more abundant over the past few years. Missing from this discussion is how students in health professions, in this case nursing students, tell medical err…
A View From the Top”: Crafting the Male “Domdentity” in Domestic Discipline Relationships
Domestic discipline (DD) is a relationship approach that advocates wifely submission and male dominance through the use of disciplinary tactics such as spanking. Because DD is seen as a deviant behavioral approach to relationships, men often turn to blogs to chronicle their experiences with DD. These blogs provide insight regarding their identity as a Dominant (Dom), or what they refer to as their “Domdentity.” The purpose of our study is to inve…
Exploiting Loss: Ethical Considerations, Boundaries, and Opportunities for the Study of Death and Grief Online
More people are turning to the Internet to communicate about dying, death, and grief experiences. This theoretical article explores the ethical dilemmas, challenges, and opportunities presented to researchers interested in exploring how death and grief are communicated online. Weaving together the literatures of computer-mediated communication and thanatology (dying and death), we discuss the ways in which many common ethical dilemmas uniquely ma…
Topping from the Bottom”: Relational Convergence of Meaning in Domestic Discipline Relationships
A Cycle of Redemption in a Medical Error Disclosure and Apology Program
Physicians accept that they have an ethical responsibility to disclose and apologize for medical errors; however, when physicians make a medical error, they are often not given the opportunity to disclose and apologize for the mistake. In this article, I explore how one hospital negotiated the aftermath of medical mistakes through a disclosure and apology program. Specifically, I used Burke's cycle of redemption to position the hospital's disclos…
It May Not Be Pretty, But It's Honest”: Examining Parental Grief on the Callapitter Blog
Following the death of a child, parents are turning to alternative means of communication to express their grief In this instrumental case study, the authors explore how 1 woman, Amy Ambrusko, communicates her grief experience on her blog, emotionally negotiating loss and parental grief. Guided by M. S. Miles's (1984) parental grief model, the authors argue that the Callapitter blog serves as a case study illustration of online parental grief. Sp…
What Happens on the Van, Stays on the Van: The (Re)Structuring of Privacy and Disclosure Scripts on an Appalachian Mobile Health Clinic
Over the past two decades, mobile health clinics have emerged to address the health needs of underserved populations. Mobile clinics offer curbside care in the primary settings of people's lives: churches, parking lots, grocery stores, and community centers. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, I explore how physical and symbolic space helps shape the (re)writing of traditional health care scripts of provider-patient confidentiality an…
Narrative Constructions of Health Care Issues and Policies: The Case of President Clinton’s Apology-by-Proxy for the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
Medicine as Culture: Illness, Disease, and the Body in Western Societies:Medicine as Culture: Illness, Disease, and the Body in Western Societies
Medicine as Culture: Illness, Disease, and the Body in Western Societies. D. Lupton. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003. 202 pp
Catching feelings: Exploring commitment (un)readiness in emerging adulthood
This exploratory study investigates how emerging adults (EAs) experience catching feelings. Applying the Stages of Change Model and Relational Receptivity Theory, this study investigates how EAs understand the cognitive and behavior changes leading up to commitment and how they process precontemplation surrounding catching feelings. Using focus group interviews, collegiate EAs ( N = 17) define catching feelings as the unintentional, unexpected, a…
It May Not Be Pretty, But It's Honest”: Examining Parental Grief on the Callapitter Blog
Following the death of a child, parents are turning to alternative means of communication to express their grief In this instrumental case study, the authors explore how 1 woman, Amy Ambrusko, communicates her grief experience on her blog, emotionally negotiating loss and parental grief. Guided by M. S. Miles's (1984) parental grief model, the authors argue that the Callapitter blog serves as a case study illustration of online parental grief. Sp…
What Happens on the Van, Stays on the Van: The (Re)Structuring of Privacy and Disclosure Scripts on an Appalachian Mobile Health Clinic
Over the past two decades, mobile health clinics have emerged to address the health needs of underserved populations. Mobile clinics offer curbside care in the primary settings of people's lives: churches, parking lots, grocery stores, and community centers. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, I explore how physical and symbolic space helps shape the (re)writing of traditional health care scripts of provider-patient confidentiality an…
Loss, Meaning-Making, and Coping After the 2016 Presidential Election
Hillary Rodham Clinton was heralded by news outlets and political pundits as the clear frontrunner and expected winner of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Her election loss to Republican Donald Trump was not only surprising, for many voters, it was devastating. Guided by the death studies literature about meaning-making after a loss, the purpose of this study was to explore how voters who were disappointed by the results of the election made …
Topping from the Bottom”: Relational Convergence of Meaning in Domestic Discipline Relationships
A Cycle of Redemption in a Medical Error Disclosure and Apology Program
Physicians accept that they have an ethical responsibility to disclose and apologize for medical errors; however, when physicians make a medical error, they are often not given the opportunity to disclose and apologize for the mistake. In this article, I explore how one hospital negotiated the aftermath of medical mistakes through a disclosure and apology program. Specifically, I used Burke's cycle of redemption to position the hospital's disclos…
Crypt Keeper That She Is”: Mariah Bell and the Media Framing of Age in the 2022 U.S. National Figure Skating Championships
In 2022, Mariah Bell won the U.S. National Figure Skating Championship in women’s singles. Media coverage of her win and subsequent appointment to the U.S. Olympic figure skating team did not center on her performance; rather journalists primarily focused on the fact that Bell was the oldest woman to win a U.S. national title since 1927 and the oldest woman to compete in figure skating for the U.S. since 1928. The purpose of this paper was to ana…
Unexpected Negative Participant Responses and Researcher Safety: “Fuck Your Survey and Your Safe Space, Trigger Warning Bullshit”
In this article, the authors revisit their experiences analyzing open-ended responses to an online questionnaire about the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. This piece initiates the discussion about the role of participant ethics in studies. People who did not fit the research eligibility requirements participated in the study and contributed vile remarks about the questionnaire and the authors. In addition to claiming the questionnaire protocol w…
A View From the Top”: Crafting the Male “Domdentity” in Domestic Discipline Relationships
Domestic discipline (DD) is a relationship approach that advocates wifely submission and male dominance through the use of disciplinary tactics such as spanking. Because DD is seen as a deviant behavioral approach to relationships, men often turn to blogs to chronicle their experiences with DD. These blogs provide insight regarding their identity as a Dominant (Dom), or what they refer to as their “Domdentity.” The purpose of our study is to inve…
Medicine as Culture: Illness, Disease, and the Body in Western Societies:Medicine as Culture: Illness, Disease, and the Body in Western Societies
Medicine as Culture: Illness, Disease, and the Body in Western Societies. D. Lupton. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003. 202 pp
Narrative Constructions of Health Care Issues and Policies: The Case of President Clinton’s Apology-by-Proxy for the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
What Happens on the Van, Stays on the Van: The (Re)Structuring of Privacy and Disclosure Scripts on an Appalachian Mobile Health Clinic
Over the past two decades, mobile health clinics have emerged to address the health needs of underserved populations. Mobile clinics offer curbside care in the primary settings of people's lives: churches, parking lots, grocery stores, and community centers. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, I explore how physical and symbolic space helps shape the (re)writing of traditional health care scripts of provider-patient confidentiality an…
It May Not Be Pretty, But It's Honest”: Examining Parental Grief on the Callapitter Blog
Following the death of a child, parents are turning to alternative means of communication to express their grief In this instrumental case study, the authors explore how 1 woman, Amy Ambrusko, communicates her grief experience on her blog, emotionally negotiating loss and parental grief. Guided by M. S. Miles's (1984) parental grief model, the authors argue that the Callapitter blog serves as a case study illustration of online parental grief. Sp…
Exploiting Loss: Ethical Considerations, Boundaries, and Opportunities for the Study of Death and Grief Online
More people are turning to the Internet to communicate about dying, death, and grief experiences. This theoretical article explores the ethical dilemmas, challenges, and opportunities presented to researchers interested in exploring how death and grief are communicated online. Weaving together the literatures of computer-mediated communication and thanatology (dying and death), we discuss the ways in which many common ethical dilemmas uniquely ma…
Topping from the Bottom”: Relational Convergence of Meaning in Domestic Discipline Relationships
A Cycle of Redemption in a Medical Error Disclosure and Apology Program
Physicians accept that they have an ethical responsibility to disclose and apologize for medical errors; however, when physicians make a medical error, they are often not given the opportunity to disclose and apologize for the mistake. In this article, I explore how one hospital negotiated the aftermath of medical mistakes through a disclosure and apology program. Specifically, I used Burke's cycle of redemption to position the hospital's disclos…
Narrativizing Nursing Students’ Experiences With Medical Errors During Clinicals
The ways providers story their mistake experiences help to explain how providers understand medical errors and how they communicate about those errors. Communication scholars have slowly begun to explore the communicative nature of medical error experiences, with communication research becoming more abundant over the past few years. Missing from this discussion is how students in health professions, in this case nursing students, tell medical err…
A View From the Top”: Crafting the Male “Domdentity” in Domestic Discipline Relationships
Domestic discipline (DD) is a relationship approach that advocates wifely submission and male dominance through the use of disciplinary tactics such as spanking. Because DD is seen as a deviant behavioral approach to relationships, men often turn to blogs to chronicle their experiences with DD. These blogs provide insight regarding their identity as a Dominant (Dom), or what they refer to as their “Domdentity.” The purpose of our study is to inve…
Development and Validation of the Communication Apprehension About Death Scale
Two studies ( N = 621) were conducted to develop and initially validate the Communication Apprehension About Death Scale (CADS). In Study 1, 302 general public participants completed a preliminary list of 66 items. An exploratory factor analysis identified two distinct dimensions of communication apprehension about death: communication anxiety and communication avoidance. A different group of participants ( n = 319) participated in Study 2. Parti…
Communication Apprehension About Death, Religious Group Affiliation, and Religiosity: Predictors of Organ and Body Donation Decisions
Communication willingness has previously been identified as an important communication factor in influencing individuals' decisions to become an organ donor. Missing from this conversation is the role of communication apprehension about death and its impact on donation decisions. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between communication apprehension about death, religiosity, religious affiliation, and donation decisions. Th…
Unexpected Negative Participant Responses and Researcher Safety: “Fuck Your Survey and Your Safe Space, Trigger Warning Bullshit”
In this article, the authors revisit their experiences analyzing open-ended responses to an online questionnaire about the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. This piece initiates the discussion about the role of participant ethics in studies. People who did not fit the research eligibility requirements participated in the study and contributed vile remarks about the questionnaire and the authors. In addition to claiming the questionnaire protocol w…
Catching feelings: Exploring commitment (un)readiness in emerging adulthood
This exploratory study investigates how emerging adults (EAs) experience catching feelings. Applying the Stages of Change Model and Relational Receptivity Theory, this study investigates how EAs understand the cognitive and behavior changes leading up to commitment and how they process precontemplation surrounding catching feelings. Using focus group interviews, collegiate EAs ( N = 17) define catching feelings as the unintentional, unexpected, a…
Contradictions and Predicaments in Instructors’ Boundary Negotiations of Students’ Health Disclosures
Students often disclose personal health information to their instructors for a variety of reasons. This puts instructors in an awkward position where they must negotiate the students' disclosure and what to do with the information. The authors conducted in-depth individual interviews with 23 university professors and identified three recurring tensions in the ways in which participants discussed their responses and actions based on student health…
Loss, Meaning-Making, and Coping After the 2016 Presidential Election
Hillary Rodham Clinton was heralded by news outlets and political pundits as the clear frontrunner and expected winner of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Her election loss to Republican Donald Trump was not only surprising, for many voters, it was devastating. Guided by the death studies literature about meaning-making after a loss, the purpose of this study was to explore how voters who were disappointed by the results of the election made …
Preparing the Next Generation of Teachers Inappropriately: When Introductory Course Directors Engage in Misbehaviors
This study explores graduate teaching assistants’ experiences of perceived introductory course director misbehaviors. The investigation situates these experiences in the larger organizational dissent conversation–a heuristic that helps to frame how these perceived misbehaviors impact graduate teaching assistants’ understanding of their current and future work relationships with course directors. Participants (N = 55) were graduate teaching assist…
Disclosure Catalysts in Student Disclosures of Personal Health Information to College Instructors
College students often struggle with the decision to disclose personal health information to their instructors. Students have to weigh the benefits and risks of disclosing personal health information to their instructors. Guided by Communication Privacy Management Theory, this study examined the motivating factors that contribute to students’ disclosure of personal health information to their instructors. Undergraduate students (N = 52) participa…
Crypt Keeper That She Is”: Mariah Bell and the Media Framing of Age in the 2022 U.S. National Figure Skating Championships
In 2022, Mariah Bell won the U.S. National Figure Skating Championship in women’s singles. Media coverage of her win and subsequent appointment to the U.S. Olympic figure skating team did not center on her performance; rather journalists primarily focused on the fact that Bell was the oldest woman to win a U.S. national title since 1927 and the oldest woman to compete in figure skating for the U.S. since 1928. The purpose of this paper was to ana…
Bearing Witness to Joy and Sorrow: Narrative Medicine and Reproductive Endocrinologist and Infertility (REI) Providers’ Journeys in Infertility Treatment
This study examines providers' perceptions of provider-patient communication in reproductive endocrinology and infertility (REI) practices. Grounded in narrative medicine, we interviewed six REI providers about their experiences providing fertility care. REI providers crafted a narrative of bearing witness by (1) situating personal and professional self in REI narratives, (2) sharing news as important medical moments, and (3) cultivating affiliat…
Belonging, Affirmation, Safety, and Efficacy (Base): An Integrative Model for Shame Resilience, Social Support, and Humor in r/hemorrhoid
The present study sought to understand how participants in r/hemorrhoid used three coping strategies to improve their health and wellbeing. Drawing upon Shame Resilience Theory (SRT), the typology of social support, and the classification of humor styles, a theory-driven approach to qualitative analysis resulted in the identification of the following themes: Belongingness (building authentic connections with others), Affirmation (asserting the va…
It’s Your Whole Life: ” Navigating Identity and Mental Health in Life after Sports
Retirement from sport can be one of the most difficult transitions for athletes who must cope with the loss of athlete identity in redefining their purpose outside of sports. Prior research has indicated the life after sports phase can pose mental health challenges in terms of identity crisis, depression, and anxiety for former athletes who cannot successfully navigate this transition. Guided by the Meaning Making Model, the following qualitative…
Thematic and Scholarly Trajectories in the Journal Health Communication
As health communication grapples with urgent challenges, including the politicization of health issues, global public health crises, and accelerating technological change, there is a growing need to understand how the field has evolved and where it is heading. Existing studies have laid important groundwork in analyzing Health Communication’s content and influence. Building on that work, this study offers a longitudinal perspective that captures …
The Role of Perceived Clinician Trust, Communication Apprehension with Providers, and Patients’ Sociodemographic Factors in Patients’ Willingness to Communicate with Primary Care Clinicians
Patients’ trust in their providers is a key indicator in determining their satisfaction with care and communication with their providers. Guided by the relationship-centered care framework, the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of patients’ perceptions of clinician trust, patient sociodemographic factors, and communication apprehension with providers on patients’ willingness to communicate with their primary care clinicians. Particip…
Journalistic framing of medical errors in newspaper coverage, 2010–2019
Psychology (19 works) · Political science (14 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Medicine (10 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Communication in Education and Healthcare (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Attachment and Relationship Dynamics (5 works) · Computer Science (5 works)