Proceedings of the 2008 Association for Business Communication Annual Convention. Copyright (c) 2008, Association for Business Communication Incorporating Experimental Research Designs in Business Communication Research Chris Lam, Matt Bauer Illinois Institute of Technology The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. Frank Parker for his help in the inception of this project idea. Introduction Research designs in communication research have historically utilized field studies, content analysis, case studies, and correlations. In fact, an analysis of research studies published in the Journal of Business Communication, spanning the past 10 years (1998-2008), was conducted and revealed several interesting patterns in terms of study designs. The number of studies published over the past 10 years has remained fairly consistent (anywhere from 8-13 per year). Further, the number of studies incorporating experimental designs has remained consistent as well. However, the number of studies incorporating experimental designs has been relatively small, 15 out of 101 total studies. That means 86 out of 101 studies have incorporated some other study design such as content analysis, field studies, case studies, and correlations. Therefore, there is a clear pattern showing a general lack of experimental design in business communication research. This paper will address this situation by first identifying general contexts where experimental design can be incorporated and when not to use experimental design in business communication research. It will then describe the research design of several types of studies published in the Journal of Business Communication and discuss how experimental research design might be incorporated in those studies. Finally, a description of the first author’s research design in his current dissertation will be discussed in order to demonstrate the process of choosing an experimental design and illustrate when to use and when not to use of an experimental approach. Features of Experimental Designs and Implications on Business Communication Research Experimental research designs can be quite advantageous in any field of study for several reasons. However, there are contexts in which experimental designs can be best applied. The first, and most important, feature of experimental design is the conclusions that can be drawn from such an approach. That is, experimental designs can provide results that reflect a cause and effect relationship. Secondly, another major feature of experimental designs is the ability to isolate and control variables in a scientific manner. These features are particularly important in business communication research for two major reasons: (1) business communication research often provides heuristics or recommendations to readers regarding “best practices” in various 1