Willingness to Communicate

Abstract

The Willingness to Communicate (WTC) Scale (McCroskey & Richmond, 1985) measures a respondent’s tendency to approach or avoid initiating communication. The scale is based from Burgoon’s (1976) Unwillingness to Communicate Scale, except the construct is worded in positive terms and assumes the respondent is self aware of his/her own approach/avoidance tendencies. The WTC scale is a 20-item probability-estimate scale (McCroskey, 1992). Eight of the items are fillers and the remaining 12 are scored to yield a total score and three subscores based on types of receivers (strangers, acquaintances, friends) and four subscores based on communication context (public, meeting, group, dyad). Users indicate the percentage of times they would choose to communicate in each type of situation, from 0 (never) to 100 (always). A representative sample of receiver/context items is key to establishing a meaningful norm because people may be more willing to communicate with some kinds of receivers and within some kinds of contexts than others. Reliability and Validity