Service provider attitudes regarding conversational rule violations in three public settings

Previous research identified an attitudinal hierarchy of conversational tradeoff choices among public service providers involving utterance-based augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems in a bookstore context. The purpose of the current research was to determine if there was a hierarchy of choices in three additional settings (i.e., movie theater, convenience store, hair salon), if these hierarchies would be the same, and if there were attitude differences in terms of participant gender and that of the person using AAC. In each of two experiments, 80 service providers viewed scripted, video-recorded conversations between a customer using AAC and a nonvisible provider in each setting, and completed an attitude questionnaire. A hierarchy of tradeoffs was found in each setting, although not the same hierarchy. No gender differences were found. As in the bookstore, messages with repetitive information were consistently rated the highest, messages with partly relevant information were consistently rated the lowest and messages with a delay in delivery were consistently rated in the middle of the hierarchies across the current settings, while messages with either inadequate or excessive information were more context-sensitive. The findings may direct individuals in message choice selections that yield the most positive evaluations by service providers and in designing technology to optimize these choices.