“Watchful Waiting” Advice for Pediatric Ear Infections

To reduce antibiotic use, clinical guidelines recommend treating many pediatric ear infections with watchful waiting (WW), which entails parents managing children’s symptoms while waiting to see if the infection will resolve without antibiotics. This study examines providers’ WW advice in recorded medical visits ( n = 28), focusing on five communication elements specified by guidelines and consistent with advice response theory. Results suggest directions for improving providers’ delivery of WW advice and are discussed with regard to theory.

Expanding Advice Response Theory by Incorporating Goal Inference: College Students’ Perceptions of Parental Exercise Advice

We expanded Advice Response Theory (ART) by proposing that recipient perceptions of advisor characteristics can be distal (e.g., parenting style) and proximal (e.g., goal inference). We examined how the recipient’s inference of the advisor’s goals (confirmation, change, and novelty) mediates associations between distal characteristics and message feature evaluations and outcomes. As predicted, positive associations occurred between perceptions of parenting style, confirmation goal inference, advice efficacy and positive facework, and desirable advice outcomes. Counter to predictions, inferring change and novelty goals did not have uniformly undesirable effects. An inference of the change goal was associated with higher efficacy ratings and the recipient changing plans following the conversation. Our findings support conceptualizing ART advisor characteristics as distal and proximal, and advisor goal inference as a relevant proximal characteristic.

Situating Advice Response Theory in a Cultural and Relational Context: How Hispanic Adults Perceive Exercise Advice From Parents

We analyzed how Hispanic participants in early adulthood ( N = 275) responded to parental advice about physical activity. We tested and extended advice response theory (ART) by contextualizing ART predictions within the cultural, relational, and topical context of this study and by articulating the role of receptiveness in the model. Overall, ART predictions were supported: Participants were more likely to implement advice and rate it favorably when they perceived the advice was efficacious in solving the problem and did not threaten their positive face (i.e., insult or shame them). Positive facework ratings were also associated with better coping and impact on exercise. Participants’ open-ended advice descriptions revealed distinctions between messages rated low or high in efficacy and positive facework. Receptiveness mediated the influence of relational satisfaction and parent expertise ratings on advice evaluations and was directly and positively associated with all advice outcomes. We discuss implications for ART and intercultural research.

How do emerging adults respond to exercise advice from parents? A test of advice response theory

Advice response theory (ART) proposes advisor characteristics, advice politeness, and advice content impact recipient perceptions of advice quality, their intention to implement the advice, and their coping. However, ART has primarily been examined in friend-to-friend advising on academic, romantic, or social issues. To test ART in an understudied relational and topical context, emerging adults ( N = 196, aged 18–28 years) were surveyed about physical activity or exercise advice they received from a parent. Current findings supported propositions about advisor characteristics and politeness, and parent–child relational elements were particularly salient. Emerging adults satisfied with their parent–child relationship rated all advice features and outcomes more favorably, and participants who reported their parents conveyed that the participant was approved of, competent, and likeable rated all outcomes more favorably. Counter to ART predictions, emerging adults displayed psychological reactance to certain message content features, responding favorably to advice they perceived to propose an efficacious solution but reacting negatively to advice perceived to emphasize their capability of performing the action and the lack of drawbacks in doing so (especially when feelings of obligation were high). ART propositions about advisor characteristics and politeness may hold across advice situations, but the parent–child dynamic during emerging adulthood and inherent face threat for health influence attempts may explain why certain formulations of advice messages elicited responses inconsistent with ART.