Date of Award
8-2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Industrial-Organizational Psychology
Committee Chair/Advisor
Dr. Marissa Shuffler
Committee Member
Dr. Allison Traylor
Committee Member
Dr. Matthew Cronin
Committee Member
Dr. Tia Dumas
Committee Member
Dr. Patrick Rosopa
Abstract
When people work together, disagreements are inevitable. How someone understands a given conflict, specifically whether they see it as a shared problem or not, can shape how they respond and whether they look to resolve it collaboratively. Researchers have studied many aspects of conflict, like what causes it and the strategies people use to manage it. But we know much less about how people think about conflict in the first place and how those thoughts affect efforts to manage conflict. This research developed a tool to study how people describe conflicts in writing. It identifies key ideas and attitudes that suggest whether someone is likely to approach a disagreement in a collaborative way. The tool was created in a few steps. First, experienced conflict mediators were consulted to come up with a list of things people might say that would indicate how collaboratively they’re thinking about the problem. Second, professionals who might use the tool for scientific or training purposes provided feedback about how useful and usable they thought the tool was. Lastly, researchers tested the tool to see if it could identify a difference in how people that had received conflict management training described conflict vs. those who had not.
Recommended Citation
Christenson, Kyle, "Flipping the Script?: The Development and Validation of a Qualitative Framework for Identifying Key Cognitive and Attitudinal Components of Conflict-Based Problem Representations" (2025). All Dissertations. 4073.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/4073
Included in
Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons, Industrial and Organizational Psychology Commons, Organization Development Commons