Data, Methods, and Ethics

Data

As a class, we worked together to create a common questionnaire. Our class wanted to look at social media and how this affected their relationships with the people who are closest to them. We gathered information on demographic characteristics: gender, race/ethnicity, marital status, age, education, religious beliefs, work status, and where people live. We asked questions that had to do with the type of medium that they use to communicate with others and their feelings on the medium. There were also questions about the type of devices that people owned and how often they use them in their daily lives.

We were required to get two people who were under 30, two people who were over 30, and one person who could be in either group. I did the questionnaire as an interview where I sat down with the person and asked them the questions in an interview style and I put the responses into the online questionnaire. I chose people who had the time to sit down with me for the forty minutes the survey took. I conducted the surveys in cafes, my dormitory and the library. I worked with the people who I was interviewing to find a place that they felt comfortable with and they could get to easily.

When building the questionnaire, I found that it was much harder than I originally expected. The basic demographic variables were difficult because we had to make sure we represented every group in our choices without having too many options. The options that we gave the participants were enough to get every facet of a topic covered. We also had to make sure that the questions we created were not biased in any way based in our own opinions. The way the questions were worded was important because we did not want anyone to be offended when they read the question. It is very hard to create good questions because you want to make sure that the questions cover the topic you are focusing on and for each questions, that you have all of the options that are available.

Methods

I was interested in texting, more specifically texting friends and how often each age group did this. I chose to analyze one question that was quantitative. The question is:

Question 1: “How often do you text to communicate with the following?”

Subcategories were: Parents, Siblings, Children, Spouse/Parter, Friends, Colleagues, Neighbors, Religious group, and Other.

Response categories were: Multiple times per day, Multiple times per week, Multiple times per month, Once per day, Once per week, Once per Day, Less often, and Never.

I chose this question because I wanted to look at the texting habits of different age groups and this was the question that would best help me make connections. I specifically wanted to look at how different age groups texted their friends. Previous studies have looked at differences between teenagers and other age groups in regards to texting and who texts more (Lenhart, 2010). I wanted to explore this with a different group of participants. This question was good because I had the potential to look at the ways people text different groups and I decided to only focus on friends because of my own experiences with this.

I performed the following steps to treat the data. First, I got rid of the subcategories that were not friends because I only wanted to focus on how often people texted their friends. Then I got rid of any non-responses because they would not help me when I was trying to analyze the data that I ended up with to use. I decided not to look at gender so I took that out as well which means I was left with age and how often these people texted their friends. I put each age separation into three different groups. I recoded 18-22 year olds as college aged, I recoded 23-29 and 30-49 as adults, and I recoded 50-64 and 65+ as older. I also recoded the response categories to become daily, weekly, monthly, and less often/never.

Using these categories I generated totals and percentages to analyze the data.

The overview of data of how often each age group texts their friends looks like this:

College Aged Daily: 85

College Aged Weekly: 8

College Aged Monthly: 1

College Aged Less often/Never: 1

TOTAL: 95

Adults Daily: 20

Adults Weekly: 5

Adults Monthly: 1

Adults Less often/Never: 1

TOTAL: 27

Older Daily: 11

Older Weekly: 14

Adults Monthly: 9

Adults Less often/Never: 8

TOTAL: 42

Ethics

To make sure that we had informed consent and to let the participants know that they could stop the survey at any time or not answer a question, we read them this:

I am requesting your participation in an interview of approximately thirty minutes for a class project. The questions will include background information such as age and gender as well as questions about political beliefs, news and media consumption, and values. 

The results of the research study will be part of my final research project for a class I am taking this term. The information will only be used in this class by other students and will be published on a website for my final project. At the end of the study, the data will be erased and the website will be removed. 

Your participation in this study is voluntary. All information is anonymous. No names or identifying information is being collected or will be used. Pseudonyms will be used for all data collected. If you do not wish to answer some or all of the questions you are free to say "pass" or "next question" or "decline to state" at any time. At any time you may stop participating, change your mind about answering any questions, and/or withdraw from the study altogether. You may stop the interview at any time, for any reason. 

Do you consent to participate? (YES answer necessary to proceed).

Thank you!

We made sure the participants knew that their names would not be used. Each participant had a specific number that was used to distinguish each set of data. After this class is over, all of the data will be erased and never used again.