Employers' use of behavioral description interviews has increased dramatically within the past decade. Yet the pedagogical literature geared toward helping appli cants respond to these unique interviewing questions has not kept pace. Evidence shows that behavioral description questions require respondents to tell stories and that storytelling is now critical to applicants' success in employment interviews. We present criteria by which to judge the effectiveness of applicants' stories and demonstrate how business communication instructors might use these criteria to help applicants tell better stories. Specifically, the criteria presented in this article are : To what degree is a story internally consistent? To what degree is a story con sistent with facts the listener holds to be true? To what degree is a story relevant to the question asked and the claim being made? To what degree is a story univocal? To what degree does a story provide details that support the claim being made? How does the way a story is told reflect the teller's beliefs and values?
Beliefs about the causes of disease and hence about responsibility for disease are central to all cultural understandings of the human condition. i%is essay explores how public communication influences such beliefs. We argue that although attributions of responsibility may appear to be medical or scientqic claims, such claims are better understood rhetorically, as means of influencing attitudes and behavior. After discussing three nontechnical audiences and related exigencies to which messages about causes of disease are often addressed, we analyze how attributions of responsibility are accomplished in selected examples ofpublic communication. In closing, we discuss implications for developing a model ofpublic communication about causes of disease and propose research to test and refine the model.
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