Interpersonal Awareness – another possible angle

In an effort to find a focus that will get the most out of the rich qualitative data I will be collecting, I decided to revise some of my earlier thoughts. As part of my exploration of self-efficacy, I came across the idea of interpersonal awareness, a term proposed by Neustaedter et al (2006).

Drawing on studies of context awareness and CSCW, Neustaedter et al. develop a model for interpersonal awareness through a qualitative analysis of the relationships of a number of participants. Relationships were put into three categories. These are placed on a spectrum in order of decreasing need for awareness and decreasing need for detail: home inhabitants, intimate socials and extended socials. The analysis also explored the types of information needed and the reasons for needing awareness. Fundamental reasons for needing awareness were distilled to co-ordination, promoting connectedness and desire to share personal knowledge. The three fundamental types of awareness information were of location, activity and status.

This study is relevant to the current problem situation as it deals with context awareness in a social context. Many studies in IS research have focussed on awareness needs in a work context. My first thoughts on possible ways to expand this model are through investigating:

• how online relationships with no face to face component fit into the model
• how support relationships fit into this model
• people’s need to express their status or convey information. Neustaedter et al. focus on the awareness of others that people require. Apart from cases involving co-ordination, they do not mention people’s own need for others to be aware of their location or status.
• how aware people are of others in an online support community, and whether increasing awareness is of any benefit

I was also thinking of looking at the relationship between interpersonal awareness and perceived social support through obtaining a subjective account of their perceived supportedness before and after the trial.

Anyway, these are thoughts that require a bit more rumination over the weekend, I think.

References

Neustaedter, C., Elliot, K., & Greenberg, S. (2006). Interpersonal awareness in the domestic realm . Proceedings of OZCHI 2006, 15-22 .

Technology Acceptance

Well, I’m pretty sure that my research design is locked in. I will recruit 3 or 4 groups of 3 from an online quit smoking support community and get them to sign up to twitter. I’ll ask them to send updates to their mini-blog as to how they feel, what they’re thinking etc (I should be careful not to specify that their posts should only be smoking related). All the members of the group will be able to see each other’s updates.

The sticking point, for many weeks now, has been deciding what the contribution of this research is, exactly. One of my supervisors initially suggested studying it from the perspective of appropriation, but that turned out to be unsuitable for a number of reasons. This was then refined to the idea of technology acceptance, with the suggestion that I look at the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). I found a paper which included a number of models of user acceptance. In the next section I offer a brief summary of three of them, their core constructs and how I think I could use them in my study.

Before I do this, I should comment overall on what I believe to be the rationale behind investigating user acceptance (in the form of intention or actual usage) for this problem. It is just one of many possible dimensions of the phenomena that could be analysed. Firstly, an interesting issue here is to see how an existing model of user acceptance, developed for organisational contexts, can be applied to the case of technology to assist in smoking cessation. Interviews and the qualitative data from their two weeks using the technology would provide rich insights into their difficulties and attitudes towards the technology. Secondly, it will provide me with a theoretical framework to guide my enquiry which may be lacking in other approaches to the situation. Overall, insights into what effects the usage and intention to use technologies can inform more successful design and introduction of those technologies.

Following is a brief overview of three models of user acceptance, along with their core constructs as defined in Venkatesh, Morris, Davis & Davis (2003). I have attempted to note how some of these constructs may manifest in the proposed study.

Technology Acceptance Model – Extended (TAM2)

Core contstructs

• Perceived usefulness
  • How much they think it will help them in their quit attempt
• Perceived ease of use
  • How easy it is to use the technology to post (eg. usability issues with sms, web forms)
  • How the posting and maintenance of awareness fits in with their life in the world at large. ie does it become irritating to receive updates via sms?
• Subjective norm (perception that important others believe they should use the technology)
  • How do others in the community perceive its use

The following two models come from sociology and psychology and have been used to model smoking cessation as well. I’m not sure at this stage if these parallels are useful in any way – are the two behaviours entirely separate or do they become in some way intertwined?

Motivation Model

Core Constructs

• Extrinsic motivation – motivation through belief that the behaviour will achieve valued outcomes
  • The extent to which users believe that using the system will help them in their quit attempt
• Intrinsic motivation – motivation through a desire to perform the activity
  • The extent to which users ‘feel better’ when using the system, eg when posting, reading others’ posts.

Social Cognitive Theory

Core Constructs

• Outcome expectations
  • Do they expect the technology to help them in their quit attempt? (closely tied to their expectations re: their quit attempt in general)
• Self-efficacy
  • How confident they are at using the technology
• Affect (individual’s liking for a particular behaviour)
  • How do they feel when using the technology
    • Do they feel better after posting?
    • Do they feel comfort reading the posts of others?
• Anxiety (anxious responses to do with performing a behaviour)
  • In tech context this can represent, for example, fear of using a technology.
  • Subjects will likely be anxious when posting, but not about the posting itself.

Possible issues with studying user acceptance

Operationalising the constructs

Validated measures of the constructs for the TAM2 were developed for organisational contexts and may not be appropriate for the smoking cessation context. The existing validated measures are in the form of questionnaires. If I couldn’t use the questionnaires at all, would I just code my qualitative data keeping these constructs in mind and validate my measures through sound reasoning? There seems to be a tension here between positivist/quantitative research, which is what has typically been done to explore models of user acceptance, and the qualitative research I am proposing.

‘Actual usage’ will not be a useful construct since I will have requested that they use the system. I could only really measure their intention to keep using the technology after the trial has been completed, and this may not be an entirely useful measure. Measuring this beforehand will be useless since they will have signed up with the intent to use the system.

Time-frame too short, contrived conditions, selection bias

The time-frame I am dealing with makes it impractical to see if the technology is actually adopted. Also, the particpants have signed up, we would assume, with an expectation that the technology will be effective in some way, so they would not be a representative sample.

Not enough of a social emphasis

Usefulness/relevance

I have my doubts that the research design as it is envisioned is long enough or can easily use adequate measures to explore one of these models. Also, we are looking at the acceptance of the technology before we have ascertained that it is actually useful in any way for this problem.

References

Dijkstra, A., De Vries, H., Kok, G., & Roijackers, J. (1999). Self-evaluation and motivation to change: social cognitive constructs in smoking cessation. Psychology and Health, 14, 747–759.

Venkatesh, V., Morris, M.G., Davis, G.B., & Davis, F.D. (2003). USER ACCEPTANCE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: TOWARD A UNIFIED VIEW. MIS Quarterly, 27(3), 425-478. Retrieved June 18, 2007, from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=10758835&site=ehost-live.

A bit of a break

After getting soaked up in university assignments, job interviews, Aikido gradings and mixing songs in the studio, I just had to have a couple of days off.

I have a meeting with my supervisors tomorrow, and I really haven’t made much progress since the last meeting. If anything, things have gotten slightly worth with the news that I won’t be able to get ethics approval any earlier than late july. The 2 week trial of twitter with international participants that I have been planning may just be too risky to do in the time frame I’ve got. I need a way to get the data I need out of some simple interviews, but who would I interview, and how would that help me with my research problem?

Questions, questions…. early rise tomorrow to have a think about it.

Notes from meeting

Just a summary of the brief meeting I just had with my supervisors.

What kind of study is this?

Last week I had to submit an assignment on my intended research methods for my project. It was a bit of a struggle trying to fit HCI research instruments like technology probes into the strict Information Systems research categories like ‘Field study’, ‘Case study’, ‘Ethnography’ and ‘Experiment’. I suggested to my supervisor that this is possibly an interpretive field study. Instead, he suggested that however I label my study, it should mention that it is qualitative, online and involves polling/probing in the form of an interview. It may be that there is an existing term to describe this kind of research, or I may have to adapt an existing term or come up with my own. He also said that what I call it will depend on the audience.

Justifying the number of participants

In order to justify the number of participants before the analysis of the data, I need to make a pragmatic argument and also refer to examples of similar research. After the research, I need to make an argument that some kind of theoretical saturation had been achieved from the data, that an analysis of more participants would not reveal any more insights.

From appropriation to adoption

After investigating appropriation it was looking like it was too ill-defined a term. There are few theories about technology appropriation. One that looked like it may be useful is only concerned with whether or not a particular technology is appropriated and the reasons behind its appropriation, rejection and ‘disappropriation’ (Just what do the youth of today want? Carroll et al. 2002). Such theories do not probe to the level of providing a rich account. Also, given the short timeframe available to me to collect data (2 weeks), it is unlikely that the full process of appropriation will run its course.

My supervisor then suggested looking at technology adoption theories instead, which are a lot more well-defined and focus on the stage where technology begins to be used. I asked whether the theory would simply be a tool or whether it was intended for my contribution to be testing how adoption models relate in the context of technology support for behavioural change. The answer I got was, effectively ‘both, but possibly only the first one’. I would use the theory as a way of analysing and understanding their behaviour (in addition to my qualitative analysis). Essentially, it is a tool for investigation (the qualitative analysis to follow would complement the perspective given by this tool). I’m still unsure as to whether this is the appropriate tool if I don’t intend for my contribution to be to adoption theory. I need to think some more about this and clear this up.

Data Analysis

We discussed hermeneutics and ‘open and axial coding’. Steve seemed to think that open and axial coding was more appropriate. His take on the hermeneutic approach was that it would take too long as it involves continually collecting data as you progress through the ‘hermeneutic circle’. I don’t recall that constantly pulling in new data was part of hermeneutics, I thought the principle was to become immersed in the data.

Open and axial coding is generally used as part of a ‘grounded theory’ approach, where the theory emerges from the data. Peter suggested I read a book by Strauss & Corben on grounded theory, which is apparently a practical guide to using grounded theory.

Contribution

I think I’ve been somehow assuming that having theory emerge from the qualitative analysis of the data means that you don’t have to define what your contribution is beforehand. I’m starting to see that that’s a little misguided. What would emerge would be a theory describing something in the area of contribution you have defined. Some possible areas for contribution that were talked about today:

• methodology – how to analyse micro-blogging data
• models of technology acceptance (adjusting the TAM)

My assumption about the contribution was that it would be in the form of design guidelines (which has an implicit assumption that they actually use it) for technology for behavioural change and for micro-blogging in particular in this context. I never seem to be able to articulate this in a way that seems sufficient

Unfinalisability

I spoke to a researcher in the department this week, Tuck Leong, about the concept of unfinalisability. It may be relevant if it seems like the micro-blog is being used for varios purposes. Each of these uses may require the user to express themselves in a different way (eg. reflect, request social support). It seems that it is the kind of thing that I could consider as a minor point in the discussion section of my thesis.

What next?

Well, Steve suggested I find some models of technology acceptance to employ. It seems to be a constant struggle to see how his suggestions fit into my expectations for this thesis. Whenever I have an approach that I’m entirely comfortable with, the question that invariably comes back to haunt me is ‘what is the contribution’. If I’m going to come up with a research approach I need to be able to answer this question clearly.