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.