Re: power independent of context?

azmitia who-is-at cats.ucsc.edu
Mon, 11 Mar 1996 04:37:54 -0800

thanks for keeping me informed about this discussion eugene.

to clarify: I believe context does matter. my message was in response
to mike's question about whether the experts' dominance and refusal to
renegotiate problem solving roles with a novice who has mastered the task
might have been specific to doing the study in a school. My comment
was simply that the first part of the study was done in a school but
because I was curious about this school-specificity of results, I did
recruit another sample of kids, this time in an out-of-school settintg
(parks and recreation summer program) and saw the same phenomenon
again.

So, for these two contexts there were parallels in the patterns and
results, but I wouldnt go as far as to say that context does not matter.
It only did not matter for this specific interaction pattern that I was
studying for this specific task and design, but there are context effects
in other measures in this same study. It is just that they are not
apparent in the role renegotiation of experts' dominance. (for example,
novices in the parks and recs sample have more frequent renegotiation
attempts than in the school context--but with similar results (expert
doesnt (usually) budge unless certain threats and negotiation strategies
are used).

so, the experts' behavior in this specific renegotiation frame is showing
more cross-context parallels than the novice. that was the gist of
my original comment.

margarita

P.S. thanks eugene for including me in this discussion.