Classifying Compliance Gaining Messages: Taxonomic Disorder and Strategic Confusion

This research examines how problems with classification systems limit knowledge claims that can be made about compliance gaining message behavior. Strategies and their operationalizations from 74 compliance gaining message classifcation systems were previously integrated into a 64–category scheme that lists each strategy along with all definitions and examples located in the literature representing that strategy (Kellermann these definitions make understanding the nature of the strategies difficult and classfication unreliable. Third, approximately two-thirds of the operationalizations used in the research literature are not valid representatives of the strategies for which they were initially generated. As a result, many “accepted” knowledge claims about compliance gaining message behavior are suspect, misstated, and/or of unknown validity.