Luther senior Annalise Johnson earns Best Student Paper Award at Iowa Communication Association Conference

Luther College senior Annalise Johnson of Decorah was selected to present research at the 2017 Iowa Communication Association Conference held Sept. 29-30 at Central College in Pella, Iowa, and took home the Best Student Paper Award.

Each year, Luther professor of communication studies Kim Powell selects the best final papers from her Research Methods course to submit for presentation at the Iowa Communication Association Conference. Then a committee of communication professors looks at all the papers submitted from Iowa colleges and chooses the top eight to present at the conference. The papers of Johnson and another Luther senior, Kristen Carlson, were selected through this process.

The daughter of Kirk and Kerry Johnson of Decorah, Johnson is a 2014 graduate of Decorah High School. She plans to graduate from Luther in 2018 with a Bachelor of Arts in a communication studies and an English writing minor.

Johnson presented a paper titled "The Effects of Self-Disclosure in Interpersonal Relationships Post-Assault: Giving Survivors a Voice." For her research, Johnson interviewed 10 female student sexual assault survivors at Luther regarding who they have told about their assault(s), how they reacted to the disclosure and how the survivor felt about the interactions.

The purpose of the paper was to find and explore survivors' thoughts and feelings regarding talking about their experiences in an interpersonal setting, and how negative or positive reactions to their disclosures affected their perception of their assault(s) and of themselves. Johnson is continuing her research this semester for her senior paper by interviewing additional survivors and locating more research to compare to her findings.

The final version of Johnson's paper will be published in the September 2018 issue of the Iowa Communication Journal.