|
"The preliminary results of our study suggest that people aremore likely to disclose sensitive information via text messagesthan in voice interviews," says Fred Conrad, a cognitivepsychologist and Director of the Program in Survey Methodology atthe University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR). "This is sort of surprising," says Conrad, "sincemany people thought that texting would decrease the likelihood ofdisclosing sensitive information because it creates a persistent,visual record of questions and answers that others might see onyour phone and in the cloud." With text, the researchers also found that people were less likelyto engage in 'satisficing' -- a survey industry term referring tothe common practice of giving good enough, easy answers, likerounding to multiples of 10 in numerical responses, for example."We believe people give more precise answers via textingbecause there's just not the time pressure in a largelyasynchronous mode like text that there is in phoneinterviews," says Conrad. "As a result, respondents areable to take longer to arrive at more accurate answers." Conrad conducted the study with Michael Schober, a professorpsychology and dean of the graduate faculty at the New School forSocial Research. Their research team included cognitivepsychologists, psycholinguists, survey methodologists and computerscientists from both universities, as well as collaborators fromAT&T Research. Funding for the study came from the NationalScience Foundation. "We're in the early stages of analyzing our findings,"says Schober. "But so far it seems that texting may reducesome respondents' tendency to shade the truth or to presentthemselves in the best possible light in an interview -- even whenthey know it's a human interviewer they are communicating with viatext. What we cannot yet be sure of is who is most likely to bedisclosive in text. Is it different for frequent texters, orgenerational, for example?" For the study, the researchers recruited approximately 600iPhone-users on Craigslist, through Google Ads, and from Amazon'sMechanical Turk, offering them iTunes Store incentives toparticipate in the study. Their goals were to see whether responsesto the same questions differed depending on several variables:whether the questions were asked via text or voice, whether a humanor a computer asked the questions, and whether the environment,including the presence of other people and the likelihood ofmultitasking, affected the answers. Among the questions that respondents answered more honestly viatext than speech: In a typical week, about how often do youexercise? During the past 30 days, on how many days did you have 5or more drinks on the same occasion? And among the questions that respondents answered more preciselyvia text, providing fewer rounded numerical responses: During thelast month, how many movies did you watch in any medium? How manysongs do you currently have on your iPhone? According to Schober and Conrad, changes in communication patternsand their impact on the survey industry prompted the study. Aboutone in five U.S. households only use cell phones and no longer havelandline phones. These households are typically not surveyed eventhough cell-only households tend to differ in important ways fromhouseholds with landline phones. More people are using textmessages on mobile phones, with texting now the preferred form ofcommunication among many people in their teens and 20s in the U.S.Texting is extremely common among all age groups in many Asian andEuropean nations. Conrad and Schober are also finding that people are more likely toprovide thoughtful and honest responses via text messages even whenthey're in busy, distracting environments. "This is the case even though people are more likely to bemultitasking -- shopping or walking, for example -- when they'reanswering questions by text than when they're being interviewed byvoice.". We are high quality suppliers, our products such as Hair Coloring Tools Manufacturer , Round Hair Brush for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits Salon Hair Brush.
Related Articles -
Hair Coloring Tools Manufacturer, Round Hair Brush,
|
