review of AN EXPERIMENTAL EXAMINATION OF THE COMPUTER'S TIME DISPLACEMENT EFFECTS of Xiaomei Cai

2007-06-27T01:36:00.000-07:00

Xiaomei Cai of the University of Delaware presents a new study where the central question is whether the computer takes time from other media. In the past time replacement studies already started in the late 1940s. The new media television dramatically reduced time spent listening to radio, reading books and attending to movie theatres. Until now a lot of new media was invented but none of these made that impact as the computer did on our society followed by the television 60 years ago. Since then a lot of studies on computers without web or internet took place but there was no outcome. The comparison of internet and other media also gave no explicit solution as some studies found that heavy internet users were replacing regular telephone with online communication. Others reported no change. The same results were seen when computer time was compared to time reading books or listening the radio. So researches where finished with the fact radio listening time was not affected by internet use.
The computer medium is changing very fast and at the time when these first studies were done, people used the computer completely different where not experienced as they are today.

The present study is varying from all past studies as instead of doing only a survey they created the idea to look how giving up computers except for school work may affect time allocated to other media. 2 hypotheses appear: quote
1) Upon deprivation of computer use, the time spent with other media will increase and upon deprivation of computer use, time spent with other media will remain unchanged.
2) Heavy computer users will display greater time shifts to other media than light users, when computer use is given up. unquote

For this field study 161 college students (51% male, 49% female) age range from 17 to 27 years were used to represent the study as they use all types of traditional media and also incorporated new media technologies into their lives. All study participants were asked to keep a 3-day media diary, where they should keep track of their media activities. On the first day they should report all media activities as usual. On day 2 some students were asked to give up watching television while others had to give up using the computer for leisure pursuits. On the third day those who had given up television on the second day were asked to give up using the computer and the other group did vice versa. Then for the study only data from the normal day and the no-computer day were used.
The diary included eleven media (computers, television, VCR, CD, radio, newspapers, video games...) where they reported time spent. The computer activities were divided in online/offline and purpose as school/work or fun.

After analysing all diaries and comparing all time aspects they came to following result:
The first hypotheses testing the normal day people spent four hours on the computer with 2hours in the internet, on the day the computer was prohibited the total computer time was only 2hours and internet time was 38 minutes and time on other traditional media was only increased by 19 minutes. However this time gained was reported as not relevant for the study, as the majority of people reported no change or reduction of time spent on other media when not using the computer. So the first part of the first hypotheses has to be rejected and part two only received a partial support.
Another solution is that there is no evidence that heavy users (computer, online or offline) increased their traditional media consumption at all when did not use the computer. So the second hypotheses is not supported as well.
The displacement effect showed 2 perspectives. The normal computer day showed that high computer usage was combined with high traditional media usage and students did not increase time spent on traditional media on the non-computer day.

The result of this study that the computer is no displacement for other media has different reasons which to my opinion and also mentioned in the article of Xiaomei Cai is based on the setting of the experiment where they combined a field study with the analyses of quantitative methods.
First they should not only have asked students because they all have a similar day schedule. If they would have picked randomly people with different professions there could be a wider difference in timings. Also the length of the study with only one day without computer was for sure too short. If one only could not use the computer for one day, everything wilI just be postponed to the next day. If one could not use the computer for a longer period, there could be some specific change in habits.
As this study involved personal entries in the diary you never know if people cheated and did not give an objective response. Further it was allowed to use the computer for home work on the non –computer day. Here you could not control if one used the net.
Also it would have been very interesting to know where or with what people spent their time when not using the computer and not using other media. Did they do any sports instead of sitting at the computer?
Finally I think it was a good try to check computer’s time displacement effects but it would be important to repeat this study and change the design of the experiment including factors mentioned above.

Barbara's blog

2007-06-22T04:06:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog !
In connection with the course INTERNET RESEARCH METHODE - A CANADIAN PERSPECTIVE I would like to show you some information.

Internet Research Method

review of AN EXPERIMENTAL EXAMINATION OF THE COMPUTER'S TIME DISPLACEMENT EFFECTS of Xiaomei Cai

Barbara's blog