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The Business Web Sites of Technical Communication Companies, Consultants, and Independent Contractors

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Technical Communication Business Web Sites: Preliminary Survey Results

Introduction

Many technical communication companies, consultants, and independent contractors devote time to constructing, maintaining, and promoting a Web site for their business. This study will explore the strategies, outcomes, and efficacy of such sites in promoting technical communicators' work by surveying and interviewing their business principals through the Internet and by analyzing their sites.

Survey questionnaire

Both the survey questionnaire and interviews will focus on activities and outcomes that would not be directly visible through a content analysis. The multiple-choice questionnaire will inquire into . . .
  • methods that promote the site;
  • clientele and other site audiences;
  • usefulness of the site's features.

Interviews

A subset of willing survey respondents will be interviewed by e-mail, primarily about their site construction and maintenance processes, specific episodes of fruitful communication from site audiences, the genesis of such communication, and the outcomes resulting from such communication.

Content analysis

Survey respondents' sites will be downloaded so as to provide a stable corpus for content analysis. The content analysis will seek in particular to understand the rhetorical strategies of these sites, to better estimate the work invested in these sites, and to seek correlations with outcomes from such work.


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