A study was undertaken that investigated the relationship between the use of U.S. government technical reports by U.S. aerospace engineers and scientists and selected institutional and sociometric variables. Survey research is the methodology used for the study. Data were collected by means of a self- administered mail questionnaire. The approximately 34 000 members of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) served as the study population. The response rate for the survey was 70 percent. A dependent relationship was found to exist between the use of U.S. government technical reports and three of the institutional variables (academic preparation, years of professional aerospace work experience, and technical discipline). The use of U.S. government technical reports was found to be independent of all of the sociometric variables. The institutional variables best explain the use of U.S. government technical reports by U.S. aerospace engineers and scientists.

A study was undertaken that explored several aspects of technical communications in aeronautics. The study, which utilized survey research in the form of a self-administered questionnaire, was sent to 2,000 randomly selected members of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Six hundred and six usable questionnaires (30.3 percent) were received by the established cut off date. The study had five objectives. The first was to solicit the opinions of aeronautical engineers and scientists regarding the importance of technical communications to their profession; second, to determine their use and production of technical communications; third, to seek their views on the content of an undergraduate course in technical communications; fourth, to determine their use of libraries/technical information centers; and finally, to determine the use and importance of computer and information technology to them. The findings add considerable information to the knowledge of technical communications practices among aeronautical engineers and scientists and reinforce some of the conventional wisdom about technical communications and question other widely-held notions. Pinelli, Thomas E. and Glassman, Myron and Oliu, Walter E. and Barclay, Rebecca O. Langley Research Center AERONAUTICAL ENGINEERING; COMPUTERS; DATA ACQUISITION; INFORMATION SYSTEMS; INFORMATION TRANSFER; SURVEYS; TECHNICAL WRITING; TECHNOLOGIES; COMMUNICATION; EDUCATION; LIBRARIES; SCIENTISTS...