Adolescent Interpersonal Communication Patterns

Abstract

Adolescents are admitted to psychiatric wards presenting with psychiatric problems which are essentially secondary to problematic interpersonal relationships. Successful interpersonal relationships however depend on effective interpersonal communication. Therefore the aim of research on adolescent interpersonal communication was to explore and describe the interpersonal communication patterns of adolescents and to develop an interpersonal communication skills approach to facilitate adolescent interpersonal communication skills within a training programme for adolescents. In this article however attention will be given to the description of the interpersonal communication patterns of adolescents. The target population of the research was 17 year old adolescents. The research consisted of a pre-phase where two contextual scenarios were formulated within group discussions with adolescents. During phase one of the research these scenarios were used to obtain video taped role plays from pairs of adolescents of the target population which were transcribed for data gathering purposes. Written dialogues were also obtained from each pair of adolescents on the same scenarios used for triangulation purposes. During phase two of the research the data was analysed according to Tesch’s method and a literature control was done to verify the results. Guba’s model for the trustworthiness of qualitative research was used.