Communication apprehension can lead to professional challenges for individuals, teams, and organizations. This is the first study of communication apprehension that involved a randomized national survey of working adults in the United States and captured broad representation in terms of age, gender, race/ethnicity, managerial status, and other factors. The study showed that communication apprehension is common, including in group discussions, meetings, interpersonal situations, and public speaking. It is significantly more common among early-career professionals, women, introverted professionals, and professionals with anxiety. Interpersonal situations appear to be the situations in which contemporary professionals are most likely to experience high communication apprehension. This study suggests more attention is needed to address communication apprehension in interpersonal and group situations. It also frames communication apprehension as a matter of inclusion and team performance.

We report our survey research about what American business professionals consider appropriate or civil mobile phone behavior during formal and informal meetings. The findings come from two of our recent research studies: an open-ended survey of 204 employees at a beverage distributor on the East Coast and a nationwide, random-sample survey of 350 business professionals in the United States. There were significant differences by age, group, gender, region, and income level. The differences between women and men were quite striking, with men nearly twice as likely to consider various mobile phone behaviors as acceptable in informal meetings.