Research Stages

Stage I: Formulation of study problem, hypotheses and concept operationalization (completed between 1.6.2001-1.11.2001)

The study problem in the empirical study is whether specific communication, perception and spatial behavior patterns can be differentiated in terms of mobile phone usage. The main working hypothesis is that mobile telephony usage associates with specific intertwined communication and movement structures. Other specific hypotheses cope with several dimensions of this process. These hypotheses, their operationalization, and the related item generation are presented below:

Table 5. The main constructs and their operationalization

MAIN CONSTRUCTS MOBILE

COMMUNICATION/COMMUNICATIVE MOBILITY

Operationalization

Dispositif dimensions

Related hypotheses Items/Questions (English translation of the German questions79)

Frame of functions and usage

(Programs)

x Mobile phones are primarily used for communication and orientation /planning x Most used function:

"voice telephony" and SMS

2.6 How often do you use the following functions and

applications of the mobile phone?

2.7 and 2.8 Which of the mobile phone applications are the most

important for you? But the least important?

2.11 Do you use you private mobile phone also in the

professional area?

Communication Content The verbal content in mobile telephony enables the micro coordination of everyday life.

SMS communication favors expressive and instrumental uses.

3.1. What do you discuss most often, when you engage in face to

face conversation with friends, relatives? What are the typical conversation issues?

3.2. What do you discuss on the mobile phone? What are the

typical issues?

3.3. About what do you avoid to discuss on the mobile phone? 3.4. How long is your typical mobile phone conversation? 3.6. What are the usual issues when you send SMS? Communication partners

Examination of target communicators

(a) symmetry in relation

2.12 Who is your typical conversation partner in string phone

conversation? But in mobile phone conversation?

2.13 Who is your typical conversation partner in SMS

exchange? But when you exchange e-mails over the Internet?

Rebuilding of mobile communication

Communicative actions Shift: Mobile telephony absorbs situational potential from other communication forms, in specific

communication situations. Arrangements produced by other media cooperate in constructing mobile communication

2.15 Which of the communication media and forms from the

table below are suitable for the usage in the following situations?

24 situations (see Appendix 1) formulated for the comparison of 8 communication forms: face to face, chat, fixed phone, mobile phone conversation, mobile phone SMS, fax, letter, e-mail Affects/Feelings

In comparison to face to face, fixed phone, chat conversation, mobile/SMS induces: x freedom x Increased power x Increased stress x entertainment/comfort x Increased closeness x Increased fear x Increased answer pressure

4.1.1 (for informal) and 4.1.2 (for informal situations)

What do you feel when you use the communication media and forms listed in this table?

Categories: face-to-face communication, E-mail over the Internet, string phone conversation, mobile phone conversation, SMS, letters

Items:

x I feel free to do anything and to talk about everything

x I feel powerful; I am the one who controls the conversation

x I feel tense, stressed

x I really enjoy it

x I feel closer to the conversation partner

x I feel hectic and inpatient

x I am afraid that something unpleasant is going to happen

x I can fully understand what the partner means

x I feel compelled to answer

79

MAIN CONSTRUCTS MOBILE COMMUNICATION/COMMUNICATIVE MOBILITY (continuation) Operationalization Dispositif dimensions

Related hypotheses Items/Questions Travel coordination

There are reciprocal effects between mobile telephony usage and the amount of travel

2.16. Which effects does the usage of the mobile phone/string

phone have on the organization of private/ professional travel? (3 point scale)

An item in question 5.1 “I am always on the way, I travel

more and more” (5 point scale)

Localization frame

There are specific places to perform mobile calls

2.10. Where are you when you usually phone from your mobile phone? But where is your most often private partner?

Mobility

Technology usage structures the coordination of remote mobility

2.1. How much time do you usually spend on the way? (in the car, train, bus, bicycle, by foot etc.) ?

Commuting travel (hours /day), irregular professional travel (hours/day), holiday travel(days/year), other private travel (days/year)

2.2. How long do you usually travel to the following destinations?

(medium distance) In the close neighborhood In the same city area In the same city

In the federal state_____ In the federal territory

Abroad. Please specify_______ Rebuilding of

communicative mobility

Distance perception and orientation

x Mobile telephony usage leads to the perception of proximity in

communication between partners

x Mobile telephony usage is associated with a good spatial orientation

5.2 (partly) To what extent do you agree with the following

statements?

Item:

x When you talk on the mobile phone you have the

impression that distances become shorter. You feel closer to the partner

x I can orient myself very well in the city or elsewhere

Temporal effects x Mobile phone usage

leads to an time compression, hurry x Simultaneous chronotype

associated with handy usage

2.9 How much do you talk on the mobile phone in the

morning, mid-days, in the afternoon, in the evening, nights?

5.2. one opinion item: Mobile phone users seem to be always

in a hurry

5.1. To what extent do you agree with the following

statements?

(5 point scale)

x One should always be punctual

x I do things one after another

x I take schedules very seriously. They can be broken only out of very serious reasons

x Family and social relations are more important for me than profession

x I am often hurried and inpatient

x I prefer to work in the presence of other persons

x I live in the present, I am not so interested in the past .

MAIN CONSTRUCTS MOBILE COMMUNICATION/COMMUNICATIVE MOBILITY (continuation) Operationalization Dispositif dimensions

Related hypotheses Items/Questions

The constituted user and technology

Attitudes towards users and mobile phones in general.

x There are differences across subgroups: users and non-users x Mobile

communicators tend to have more positive perceptions of the technology and its usage than non-users

5.2 (partly) To what extent do you agree with the following

statements? dichotomic variables:

x The mobile phone connects people

x Who wants to have success has to use a mobile phone

x Mobile phones are dangerous for health

x Mobile phones are complicated, difficult to use devices

x Mobile phones must not be used in public places

Image of cell phone communicators/

x There are differences across subgroups: users and non users

x Mobile communicators tend to perceive a more favorable image of mobile users

x Differences in the assessment of target population between users and non users

F5.2 (partly) To what extent do you agree with the following

statements? (dichotomic) Items:

x Mobile phones users plan better their lives

x Mobile phone users have more friends than non-users

x Mobile phone users are annoying

x Mobile phone users are modern

x Mobile phones are particularly suitable for businessmen

x Mobile phones are particularly suitable for teenager

x Mobile phones are particularly suitable for active people

x Mobile phones are particularly suitable for conversation with family members or relatives

x Mobile phones are particularly suitable for work conversations

Mobile phones are particularly suitable for old persons

Stage II: Construction of the structured questionnaire and translation in German

After operationalization, a structured questionnaire was constructed. The questionnaire contains open-ended and pre-coded questions, and scales. This begins with some easy introductory personal questions (partial demographics). It continues with a question group for assessing mobility in everyday life. Then, it enters the area of communication media usage: places; day periods; communicators; and communicative actions/situations. This is the most difficult part, placed therefore in the middle of the questionnaire. Then, the third section asks about communication contents in face-to-face, mobile and SMS. The assessment of the affective reactions in various communication situations comes next in the fourth section. It continues with a battery of time and distance perception scales and with attitudes about mobile phones and mobile communicators. The remaining demographic questions end the questionnaire.

Stage III: Pre-testing the questionnaire

Between 1.11.2001 and 1.04 2002, a draft questionnaire version was used for the pre-testing of the comprehension of the questions and organization of the sequel. Pre-test interviews provided an important means of finding out directly from respondents what their problems are with the questionnaire. More specifically, they yielded information about major problems— such as respondents repeatedly identifying the same questions and concepts as sources of confusion. After analysis of the pre-test results, several modifications were implemented because the first draft of the questionnaire completion proved to be rather difficult and lengthy for some subjects. The answers to some open-ended questions were transformed in scale statements. Items that produced relatively little information and did not discriminate well were excluded from research. Also, some difficult 5-point scales were turned into binary yes/no. In this way, the revised questionnaire contained fewer items as before and was more comprehensive.

Stage IV: Data collection

Between 1.04.2002 and 1.07.2002, an online German version of the questionnaire was constructed. On July 2002, the survey was implemented on the WWW at the homepage:

http://www.ifs.tu-darmstadt.de/gradkoll/Umfrage.html. Additionally, a message was sent to

20 newsgroups and forums. The message explained the purpose of the study, and provided direction for completion of the survey and the URL of the online questionnaire. I also prepared e-mail messages for persons whose private homepages I discovered on the WWW.

Stage V: Coding and entering data

The inputs from mobile phone users and non-users on the WWW were converted with a CGI script provided by the Formular Chef tool in http://www.nettz.de to numerical codes and text. A database table was constructed in SPSS, and 486 variables were defined in terms of measurement level, type, and label.

Stage VI: Data analysis framework

The general schema for conducting statistical analysis includes classification of variable types, description of procedures best suitable for each variable type and their applicability for testing specific hypotheses.

The numerical data in the present study were subjected to various statistical analyses. The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) was used to conduct analyses of the collected data. The collected data include two groups: closed-ended questionnaire data and open-ended questionnaire data.

All the closed-ended questions were converted to numerical values and stored in the data table. Ratio; interval; ordinal; multiple nominal and binary variables resulted. The statistical tools, which analyze interval and ordinal data, are: frequency distributions; cross tabulations; and the parametric or non-parametric tests of differences (if the distribution not normal). Difference tests can be used to compare the means of two or more groups - for example, users and non-users of mobile phones on the values of the variables. Because, in the majority of cases, the data were not normally distributed; only non-parametric tests of difference

(Kruskall Wallis for multiple comparisons or Mann-Whitney for two independent samples) could be used. Also, if data assumptions for correlation and regression are fulfilled, correlation and regression analysis may be performed. The bivariate correlation computes Pearson’s correlation coefficient for interval variables, Spearman’s rho for ordinal, and Kendall’s tau-b and Lambda for nominal variables with their significance levels. Correlations measure how variables or rank orders are related: for example, mobility in hours with frequency of technology usage (scale), SMS usage frequency with age, or mobile telephony usage with nominal variables describing affective perceptions of wireless telephony.

Data reduction is useful to position the subjects in a bi-dimensional or tri-dimensional field. For instance, the Principal Component Analysis can be used in data reduction to identify a small number of factors, which explain most of the variance observed in a much larger number of manifest variables. This reduction was applied for the scales describing usage frequency of various mobile functions (F2.6) or for the usage situations in the pre-test phase. The same objective can be fulfilled by Multidimensional Scaling procedure, which “assigns observations to specific locations in a conceptual space (usually two- or three-dimensional), such that the distances between points in the space match the given dissimilarities as closely as possible”80. The hierarchical cluster attempts to identify relatively homogeneous groups of cases (or variables) based on selected characteristics, using an algorithm that starts with each case (or variable) in a separate cluster and combines clusters until only one is left. With the help of this technique, I clustered communication forms (face-to-face; chat; fixed telephone; mobile phone; Fax; letters; e-mail) in question 2.15 based on usage situations, after constructing a special matrix for this analysis.

For binary and multiple nominal variables, specific analysis tools were used. Cross Tabulations were employed to indicate the relationship between two categorical variables - for example, the mobile phone usage and various localization or affective variables.

Finally, the responses to the open-ended questions were tabulated as frequency counts.

In document Understanding the Mobile Telephony Usage Patterns (Page 93-98)