The Relative Importance of Selected Communication Skills for Positive Peer Relations: American Adolescents’ Opinions

Gender and Communication in Adolescence

Gender of adolescents is a factor that has been presented in the literature as potentially affecting the ways in which adolescents communicate, and Cooper and Anderson-Inman (1988) have suggested that, by the middle period of adolescence, teenagers have regularized their gender-related communication patterns. Several differences in gender-related communication characteristics of adolescents have been reported. For example, Thurlow (2003) found that the male and female adolescents in his work differed notably in their conversational orientations, with the females tending to focus on “more affective” qualities of communication, such as those related to empathetic aspects of interactions, and the males tending toward “more effective” features of communication, such as selecting appropriate topics of conversation (p. 55). In a similar vein, Nelson and Rosenbaum (1972) found that male and female adolescents differed in their knowledge of slang words for different topics.

The picture for identifying gender-related communication differences may not, however, be clear cut. For example, when Larson and McKinley (1998) considered the findings for gender-related conversational differences in their longitudinal study of TD adolescents, the researchers concluded that there was a “relative lack of gender-related differences” (p. 196) in characteristics of the adolescents’ conversations. In the Henry et al (1995) study, TD Australian male and female adolescents did not differ in their rankings of the importance of the 14 communication skills in their friends’ talk with them. In contrast, when the Australian adolescents in the Reed et al. (1999) study were asked to rank the same communication skills for their own communication with their friends, it appeared that the male adolescents considered a few of the communication skills as either more or less important than their female counterparts. However, patterns for gender-related differences for the relative importance of the communication skills were less apparent when the adolescents considered what were their more and less important communication skills when talking with their teachers (Reed et al., 1999).

Findings such as these suggest that without additional empirical support it may be imprudent to make broad, generalized conclusions about the nature of gender-related differences in adolescents’ communication and about their opinions of what communication skills are more and less important in different contexts. It is possible that communication differences based on gender “may be more circumscribed than widely supposed” (Craig & Evans, 1991, p. 876), affected by research methodologies (Law, Rush, Parsons, & Schoon, 2013), and subject to influences of communication context, including cultural-linguistic contexts.

Participants

The participants were TD American adolescents in the two, Grade 10 English classrooms in a high school located in a U.S. metropolitan region (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012) consisting of several counties and population centers. The median income of families in the area fell in the middle quintile range of U.S. household incomes (Elwell, 2014) and was comparable with the median income for the state in which the high school was located (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). The Australian adolescents in the Henry et al. (1995) study were also from middle socioeconomic neighborhoods of a metropolitan area. As with the Henry et al. (1995) study, English classes were targeted because students’ abilities with regard to language and literacy were likely to be demonstrated in this content area and known to their teachers. And, as with the Henry et al. (1995) study, Grade 10 was targeted because the adolescents in this grade generally represent those in the middle or typical adolescence period as opposed to earlier or later periods of adolescence and are in a developmental period during which peer relations are important (Larson & McKinley, 2003; Mikami, Szwedo, Allen, Evans, & Hare, 2010).

All adolescents in the two classes were invited to complete a paper-pencil questionnaire about the importance of the 14 communication skills. Letters from the school sent home with the adolescents informed parents and students prior to data collection that the questionnaire survey was to take place in their English classes on a specified date and provided them with the opportunity to opt out from participating. No parents or adolescents opted out.

Only completed questionnaires of adolescents who did not present with one or more exclusionary criteria for participating in the study were included in data analyses. The exclusionary criteria were (a) currently receiving tutoring or any Response-to-Intervention (RtI) Tier 2 or 3 interventions for any reason, (b) having an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) for any disability, (c) considered by the students’ classroom teachers as having academic or literacy problems, (d) known to the SLP serving the school as having language or literacy difficulties, and (f) identified by school personnel as an English language learner. To remove questionnaires from inclusion in the database, the teachers and SLP needed to know the identity of adolescents completing the questionnaires. Rather than use names, adolescents wrote their student identification (ID) numbers on the questionnaire forms to provide some degree of anonymity. The teachers and SLP used the ID numbers to remove relevant questionnaires from being included in the database.

For one of the classes (hereafter referred to as Grade 10-1), none of adolescents enrolled in the class presented with any of the exclusionary criteria. All 22 adolescents in class on the date of the questionnaire administration completed the questionnaire, and all were included in the database (n = 22). In the second Grade 10 class (hereafter Grade 10-2), the 23 adolescents in attendance on the questionnaire administration day completed it. However, seven adolescents in the class presented with one or more of the exclusionary criteria. The completed questionnaires for these adolescents were, therefore, not included in the data analyses, but all remaining questionnaires were (n = 16). No completed questionnaires from either class needed to be excluded from the database because they had been completed incorrectly.

The 16 questionnaires from the adolescents in the Grade 10-2 class were added to those from the Grade 10-1 class, for a total of 38 questionnaires comprising the database (n = 38). Twelve were completed by females and 26 by males. The ages of the adolescents whose questionnaires comprised the data for analyses ranged from 15;7 to 17;6 years, with a mean age of 16;3 years.

Procedures

Data Transformation and Management

To be consistent with the Henry et al. (1995) study, the 0 to 100 rankings on adolescents’ questionnaires were transformed to values of 1 to 14 for data analyses. All rankings of 100 on the questionnaires were assigned the ranked value of 1 (most important), and all rankings of 0 were assigned the ranked value of 14. The remaining skills were assigned values of 2 to 13 according to the values the adolescents assigned on their questionnaires. Students in Communication Sciences and Disorders, who were trained by the authors in the procedures for transforming the rankings on the questionnaires and entering the 1 to 14 rankings into a computer spreadsheet, performed these data management tasks. The accuracy of the transformed rank values and spreadsheet entries was reviewed 3 times: once by a research assistant working under the supervision of the second author, then by the second author, and finally by the first author, with each of these individuals working independently and blind to the others’ reviews. The three reviews were subsequently compared. All corrections arising from the comparisons were confirmed jointly by the first and second authors.

Consistency of Rankings Over Time

Ten days after the initial administration of the questionnaire in the Grade 10-1 English class, the same author re-administered the questionnaire in the same class without prior notice to the adolescents. The purpose of re-administering the questionnaire was to examine the consistency of the adolescents’ rankings of the relative importance of the communication skills over time. The same procedures for administration as for the initial administration were followed, including distributing the seven versions with randomly re-ordered statements. Fifteen adolescents who completed the questionnaire on the first administration were present at the second administration; their first and second completed questionnaires were paired on the basis of their ID numbers. ID numbers were then removed from all questionnaires.

Using a Wilcoxon signed-rank test for each of the 14 communication skills, the transformed ranks (1–14) that the adolescents assigned to the communication skill at the first and second administrations were compared on the pairs of questionnaires. None of the 14 comparisons was statistically significant at the two-tailed .05 level. The 14 z scores ranged from −0.032 to −1.583, with p values ranging from .113 to .975. These results indicated that the adolescents’ rankings for each of the communication skills did not differ significantly from their first completion of the questionnaire to the second, suggesting consistency over time in their opinions about the relative importance of the communication skills.

Relative Importance of the Communication Skills

Because the Grade 10-2 class had several adolescents who met exclusionary criteria and whose questionnaires were not included in the database compared with the Grade 10-1 class which had no adolescents meeting the exclusionary criteria, the researchers questioned if the adolescents in the two classes might represent different populations of adolescents that could lead to different rankings of the communication skills. To examine this possibility, a Mann–Whitney U test was used to compare the rankings of the adolescents in Grade 10-1 with those of the adolescents in Grade 10-2. The U value was 0.98 and z score was 0.02, resulting in a p value of .98. There was no statistically significant difference between the rankings of the communication skills by the adolescents in the two classes. Consequently, the rankings of the skills by the adolescents in the two classes were pooled for the database of the study, that is, n = 38.

Consistent with the presentation of the results used by Henry et al. (1995), a histogram for the frequency distribution of the 1 to 14 ranks of each communication skill was constructed. The 14 histograms are shown in Figure 1, ordered left to right by measure of skew. Table 2 shows the measure of skew, mean rank, and mode(s) for the distribution of ranks for each of the 14 communication skills. The skills are listed in the table in descending order of importance based on measure of skew.

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Figure 1.

Histograms presented left to right by the measures of skew for the frequency distributions of the adolescents’ rankings for the 14 communications skills.

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Table 2.

Measures of Skew, Mean Ranks, and Modes for the Rankings of the Communication Skills in the Current Study, With Skills Presented in Descending Order of Importance Based on Measures of Skew.

Communication skill	Skew	Mean rank	Mode
Nonverbal comprehension	0.62	5.38	1
Perspective taking	0.52	5.55	1/3
Vocal tone comprehension	0.43	5.78	3
Tact	0.42	6.54	5/6/10
Turn taking	0.31	6.66	4
Topic selection	0.11	7.12	10/13
Vocal tone expression	0.02	8.13	8
Clarification	−0.02	7.11	6
Logical communication	−0.08	7.88	5/12
Topic maintenance	−0.18	8.07	5/8
Eye contact	−0.30	7.97	8/12
Humor comprehension	−0.44	8.39	7
Narrative	−0.57	9.25	13
Slang usage	−1.10	11.17	14

The results suggested that five communication skills were considered by the adolescents as relatively more important, based on the measures of skew, which ranged from 0.62 to 0.31. These skills were, in order of ranking, nonverbal comprehension, perspective taking, vocal tone comprehension, tact, and turn taking. For the three skills with the highest rankings (nonverbal comprehension, perspective taking, and vocal tone comprehension), the mean ranks (5.38 to 5.78) and modes (1, 3, and the bimode 1 and 3) were consistent with the measures of skew, which indicated comparatively large numbers of adolescents assigned ranks that clustered in the more important range. Although the fourth ranked communication skill, tact, had a measure of skew (0.42) similar to that of vocal tone comprehension (0.43), the immediately higher ranked skill, the mean rank for tact (6.54) was similar to the next lower ranked skill, turn taking, with a mean rank of 6.66. Tact also had three modes (5, 6, and 10), suggesting that some of the adolescents perceived it to be a less important skill than the three higher ranked skills and that there were varying opinions among the adolescents about the relative importance of the skill. A noticeable gap between the measures of skew for tact and turn taking (0.42 and 0.31, respectively) was apparent. The mode for turn taking, the fifth ranked skill, was 4. There was a large gap between turn taking (0.31) and the next lower ranked skill, topic selection (0.11), which also had a lower mean rank (7.12) and two modes (10 and 13), thus indicating topic selection was considerably less important than the five higher ranked skills.

Taken together, these results suggested that nonverbal comprehension, perspective taking, and vocal tone comprehension were among the more important of these five communication skills, and visual inspection of the histograms (see Figure 1) for these three skills shows contours for the frequency distributions of ranks consistent with these impressions. Results also suggested that tact and turn taking appeared to be of somewhat less importance, although still more important than the remaining nine communication skills. Visual inspection of the histograms for tact and turn taking also lent support to the suggestion that the relative importance of these two skills was less than that for the three higher ranked skills.

For four skills, results suggested the adolescents considered them to be among the less important. These communication skills were eye contact, humor comprehension, narrative, and slang usage. The measures of skew/mean ranks for these skills were −0.30/7.97, −0.44/8.39, −0.57/9.25, and −1.10/11.17, respectively. The modes for these skills (8/12, 7, 13, 14, respectively) suggested, however, that narrative and slang usage were considered by the adolescents to be particularly less important. The histograms for these four skills were consistent with these impressions. There was also a noticeable gap between the measures of skew for narrative (−0.57) and slang usage (−1.10), which was the lowest ranked skill, indicating that the adolescents considered slang usage to be of markedly less importance than narrative. Another noticeable gap was present between the measures of skew for eye contact (−0.30), which was the highest ranked of the group of the four skills, and topic maintenance (−0.18), which was the next higher ranked skill (see Table 2).

The results for the remaining five communication skills suggested they were either of intermediate importance to the adolescents as a group or of variable importance. These skills were topic selection, vocal tone expression, clarification, logical communication, and topic maintenance. As seen in Figure 1, the histograms for these skills revealed frequency distributions that approximated a normal curve contour (e.g., vocal tone expression), suggesting intermediate importance, or showed multimodal (e.g., logical communication) or flattened contours (e.g., topic selection), suggesting the adolescents as a group had a range of opinions about the relative importance of the skills. As seen in Table 2, the mean ranks, which ranged from 7.12 to 8.13, clustered around the midpoint of the 1 to 14 range, and the measures of skew and modes were consistent with the impressions conveyed by the histograms.

Influence of Gender

The ranks that the male and female adolescents assigned to the relative importance of the 14 communication skills were compared with a Mann–Whitney U test. The U value and z score were 0.95 and 0.11, respectively, with a p value of .91. There was, therefore, no statistically significant difference between the males’ and females’ overall rankings of the relative importance of the communication skills.

Summary and Comparison of Results

This study investigated TD, Grade 10, American adolescents’ opinions about the relative importance of 14 communication skills in their positive peer relationships, specifically in their friends’ communication when their friends are talking with them. The adolescents considered five of the 14 communication skills as more important. Shown in Table 3, these were nonverbal comprehension, perspective taking, vocal tone comprehension, tact, and turn taking. Consistent with the framework Henry et al. (1995) used in discussing their results, four of the skills (i.e., nonverbal comprehension, perspective taking, vocal tone comprehension, tact) were those characterized as empathetic and addressee-focused in nature. Of these, nonverbal comprehension, perspective taking, and vocal tone comprehension seemed to be particularly important features of their peers’ communication. As seen in Table 1, perspective taking and vocal tone comprehension were the two highest ranked communication skills by the Australian adolescents in the Henry et al. (1995) investigation, and as seen in Table 3, these formed the group considered as the more important communication skills. In the Reed et al. (1999) study, nonverbal comprehension joined perspective taking and vocal tone comprehension in the grouping of the more important communication skills (see Table 3). The emergence of empathetic and addressee-focused communication skills as those adolescents considered more important for positive peer relationships was consistent across this study with American adolescents and the previous similar investigations with Australian adolescents and also consistent with the literature over many years that has proposed the importance of conveying empathy in adolescents’ interpersonal communication with peers (e.g., Donahue & Bryan, 1984; Durkin & Conti-Ramsden, 2007; Reisman & Storr, 1978; Spencer et al., 2013; Thurlow, 2003, 2005). It appears that both American and Australian adolescents similarly value the importance of empathy-related communication skills in positive peer relationships.

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Table 3.

Comparison of Findings From the Current, the Henry, Reed, and McAllister (1995), and the Reed, McLeod, and McAllister (1999) Studies With the Skills Grouped as More, Intermediate/Variable, and Less Important Regarding Relative Importance.

Grouping of skills by degree of importance	Current StudyFriends’ communication	Henry et al. (1995) Friends’ communication	Reed et al. (1999) Own communication with friends
More important	Nonverbal comprehension Perspective taking Tact Turn taking Vocal tone comprehension	Perspective taking Vocal tone comprehension	Nonverbal comprehension Perspective taking Vocal tone comprehension a
Intermediate/variable	Clarification Logical communication Topic maintenance Topic selection Vocal tone expression	Clarification Eye contact Logical communication Nonverbal comprehension Tact Topic selection Turn taking Vocal tone expression	Clarification Logical communication Tact Topic selection Turn taking Vocal tone expression
Less important	Eye contact Humor comprehension Narrative Slang usage	Humor comprehension Narrative Topic maintenance Slang usage	Eye contact Humor comprehension Narrative Topic maintenance Slang usage

a

“Vocal tone comprehension” was referred to as “Vocal tone interpretation” in the Reed et al. (1999) study.

In the current study, turn taking was the one skill among the group of the five higher ranked skills that might be an exception with regard to being considered an empathy-related communication skill. Although turn taking has elements of consideration for the communication partner (i.e., not interrupting during conversations, politeness, and an attentiveness to the partners’ messages), it also has elements that might be associated with managing the flow of discourse (i.e., passing the communicative baton back and forth in orderly ways). It is not known which elements of turn taking the American adolescents might have been focusing on in deciding on their rankings. Turn taking was not among the more important communication skills in either the Henry et al. (1995) or Reed et al. (1999) studies with Australian adolescents.

Several explanations for the disparity between the American and Australian adolescents’ opinions about the relative importance of turn taking are possible. One is that American adolescents regard the relative importance of turn taking differently than Australian adolescents, thus reflecting a possible cultural-linguistic difference. Another might relate to methodological variations. Although the procedures used in the current study closely mirrored those of the Henry et al. (1995) study and approximated those of the Reed et al. (1999) investigation, there were a few differences. One was the number of questionnaires that comprised the relevant databases, that is, 38 for the current study and 110 and 100 in the Henry et al. and Reed et al. studies, respectively. As in the current study turn taking was the lowest ranked skill in the group of five more important communication skills, a larger sample size might have provided a different picture, perhaps shifting it more obviously into the more important group of skills or into the group considered to be of intermediate/variable importance. The latter alternative would be consistent with the relative importance the adolescents assigned to turn taking in the Henry et al. and Reed et al. studies, as shown in Table 3.

Another methodological variation relates to the chronological ages of the adolescents in the studies. The start of the school years in the two countries differs. Whereas the American school year begins in August/September, the Australian school year corresponds to the calendar year, which means Australian students begin in late January/early February, thus affecting the chronological ages of students in the grades. The mean age of the American adolescents in the current study was 16;3 years compared with the mean age of 15;6 years for the Australian adolescents in the Henry et al. study. The older adolescents in the American sample might consider the importance of turn taking differently than younger Australian adolescents.

The American adolescents in the current study considered four communication skills to be relatively less important. These were eye contact, humor comprehension, narrative, and slang usage (see Table 3). Three of these skills (i.e., humor comprehension, narrative, slang usage) were also among the group of the less important communication skills in the two related studies with Australian adolescents (Henry et al., 1995; Reed et al., 1999), suggesting congruence in opinions of American and Australian adolescents. Across the three related studies (i.e., the current study, the Henry et al., 1995, and Reed et al., 1999 studies), slang usage emerged as the markedly less important skill for communication with peers. Although verbal humor and slang usage, which are figurative language skills with substantial metalinguistic components, have been purported in the literature as important for peer relationships in adolescence (e.g., Donahue & Bryan, 1984; Eckert, 2005; Im-Bolter et al., 2013; Nippold, 2007; Spector, 1990), American and Australian adolescents seemed to agree that these are less important than other communication skills. Henry et al. (1995) suggested several reasons that these two skills might be considered by adolescents to be less important:

To the extent that this last reason may have influenced adolescents’ rankings of these two skills in the current study, as well as in the Henry et al. (1995) and Reed et al. (1999) studies, both American and Australian TD adolescents might have been demonstrating an awareness of varying degrees of appropriateness of different communication behaviors in particular contexts.

The adolescents’ rankings indicating that relating narratives is a less important communication skill for positive peer relationships were consistent across the current, the Henry et al. (1995), and Reed et al. (1999) studies. Despite the emphasis that has appeared in the language development, literacy, and language impairment literatures about the significance of children’s and adolescents’ narrative skills for academic and social success (e.g., Donahue, 2014; Scull, 2013; Wetherell, Botting, & Conti-Ramsden, 2007), the congruency of the lower ranking of narrative in the three related studies suggested that, at least for interpersonal communication with peers with whom they have positive relationships, TD American and Australian adolescents view it as less important than other communication skills.

Unlike the consistency across the three studies in the rankings of humor comprehension, slang usage, and narrative as less important communication skills, eye contact was among the less important communication skills in the current and the Reed et al. studies but not in the Henry et al. study. Eye contact can be a strategy used to control the flow of conversation (i.e., discourse management), an interpersonal skill associated with empathy, or both. Which element or elements of eye contact the adolescents were considering in assigning their rankings to this communication skill is not clear. Another inconsistency in results across studies concerned topic maintenance, a communication skill considered to be one related to discourse management. The Australian adolescents in the Henry et al. (1995) and Reed et al. (1999) studies ranked topic maintenance among the group of the less important skills, but the rankings of the American adolescents in the current study suggested that it had intermediate/variable importance (see Table 3). As with the communication skill, turn taking, cultural-linguistic and/or methodological factors may have led to the differing results for these skills. In the current study, topic maintenance was the skill ranked immediately higher than the highest ranked skill (eye contact) in the group of less important communication skills and it had two modes (5 and 8), which indicated some variability in the American adolescents’ opinions about the relative importance of this skill for positive peer relationships.

The adolescents in the current study assigned ranks to the remaining five communication skills that suggested they considered these to be of intermediate importance or as a group they had varying opinions about the relative importance of the skills. Four of these five could be viewed as discourse management strategies (i.e., clarification, logical communication, topic maintenance, topic selection), with the one remaining communication skill in the group (i.e., vocal tone expression) considered characteristic empathy. With the exception of topic maintenance, these communication skills were also opined by the Australian adolescents in the Henry et al. (1995) and Reed et al. (1999) to be of intermediate or variable importance.

Overall, the pattern for which communication skills of their peers and the nature of those skills (i.e., associated with empathy, discourse management, or figurative language) that American adolescents considered as more, intermediate/variable, and less importance for positive peer relationships was consistent with previous research with Australian adolescents (Henry et al., 1995). The overall pattern was also consistent with that found for Australian adolescents’ opinions about what was more and less important in their own communication with peers for positive relationships (Reed et al., 1999). For both American and Australian adolescents, communication skills associated with empathy and a focus on the communication partner tended to be perceived as either more important or, for a few skills, of intermediate/variable importance. No communication skills associated with empathy were ranked among the less important skills. The American and Australian adolescents also concurred that the figurative language skills (i.e., humor comprehension, slang usage) were of less importance in their communication with peers. Communication skills characteristic of discourse strategies (e.g., topic selection, clarification, logical communication) were generally opined to be of intermediate/variable importance or less importance for both American and Australian adolescents. Adolescents from what might be perceived as two comparatively aligned cultural-linguistic groups appeared to have similar views about the relative importance of different communication in their interactions with peers. However, future research to determine whether TD adolescents with other cultural-linguistic backgrounds have similar or different opinions is needed to avoid the possibility of erroneously overgeneralizing results.

Gender of the adolescents in the current study did not affect which skills were of more or less importance in their peers’ communication with them. Although Reed et al. (1999) found a few differences in opinions about importance based on adolescents’ gender, that research focused on the skills in adolescents’ own communication with their peers. In contrast, the study by Henry and colleagues (1995), which focused on the peers’ communication, as did the current study, obtained the same results as those of the current study. It appears that, at least with regard to the communication of their peers with whom adolescents have positive relationships, the gender of TD American and Australian adolescents does not affect the degree of importance they attach to the 14 communication skills in the studies. Differences in opinions about the relative importance of other communication skills based on gender might exist, but further research is needed to confirm or reject this possibility.

Clinical Implications

Clinically, the similarity of results across this and the related studies can provide SLPs with a degree of confidence in considering the types of communications skills that are more and less important to adolescents for their positive peer relationships. The congruency in results also provides some evidence for SLPs to use in selecting particular communication skills as intervention goals. Although figurative language skills, such as helping adolescents to understand their peers’ verbal humor or to use appropriate slang expressions, may be important in adolescents’ positive peer relationships, these may not, initially, be the more beneficial intervention objectives for adolescents with SLI/LLD. Rather, focusing on communication skills that convey concern, caring, and empathy for their peers during their peer–peer interactions (e.g., perspective taking, paralinguistic communication skills, such as vocal tone comprehension and nonverbal comprehension) may more quickly boost the quality of peer relationships for adolescents with SLI/LLD. These communication skills have components of comprehension and understanding communication partners’ messages, features described by Thurlow (2003) as good-listening communication characteristics of adolescents who engage in positive interactions with peers. Clinical practice could benefit from future research that would evaluate the effectiveness of intervention that focuses on these types of communication skills in improving peer relationships of adolescents with SLI/LLD.

Even though intervention literature on adolescents with SLI/LLD has for several years advocated having these adolescents participate in deciding on their intervention goals (e.g., Larson & McKinley, 1985, 2003; Reed, 2018), a caveat to this strategy seems appropriate. Adolescents with SLI/LLD may not, at least initially in intervention, have accurate perceptions about successful peer communication for them to be reliable assistants in selecting communication skills for intervention goals aimed at improving their relationships with peers. Reed and Brammall (2006) conducted a preliminary study designed to evaluate the validity of methodological adaptations of the Henry et al. (1995) procedures to obtain opinions of adolescents with SLI/LLD about the relative importance of different communication skills for positive peer relationships. Results suggested that these adolescents may attach different importance to some communication skills than their TD counterparts. To the extent that adolescents with SLI/LLD might begin intervention with differing ideas about what are the more important communication skills for their success in their peer interactions, the adolescents’ differing opinions could open the door for metapragmatic and metalinguistic intervention approaches aimed at heightening their awareness of their TD peers’ opinions.

SLPs also want to be aware that what they think might be more important communication skills for positive adolescent peer relationships might not concur with adolescents’ opinions. In investigating Australian SLPs’ opinions about the relative importance of 14 communication skills for adolescents’ positive peer relationships, the results of the Reed, Bradfield, and McAllister (1998) study revealed that the SLPs ranked the discourse management skills of topic selection, clarification, topic initiation (see Note 2), and logical communication as the highest in importance, whereas perspective taking, tact, vocal tone comprehension, and vocal tone expression, all skills associated with empathy and concern for the communicative partners’ needs, were ranked as the lowest in importance. These results reflected opinions inconsistent with TD adolescents’ opinions. Caution is warranted in selecting intervention objectives to improve adolescents’ communication with peers on the presumption that adolescents and SLPs attach a similar degree of importance for positive peer relationships to the same communication skills. It is also not known if American SLPs would rank the importance of these skills similarly to the Australian SLPs, thus suggesting merit for a follow-up study with American SLPs.