The Effect of a Students Year of College on Frequency of Facebook Status Update - Research Paper Example

?THE EFFECT OF A YEAR OF COLLEGE ON FREQUENCY OF FACEBOOK STATUS UP Year: Registration number: Introduction This study was carried out to investigate the relationship between a student’s year of college and the frequency of Facebook status update. There was need to determine how often various students logged in to their Facebook accounts and updated their status. There was also need to determine whether a student’s year of study affected the rate at which the specific student changed their status on Facebook. It was considered dangerous if students spent most of their time on social network, especially Facebook. If a student spends a lot of time on Facebook, there might be little time left for the student to concentrate on studies. Excessive use of Facebook would therefore lead to poor overall academic performance in the college. As the students gets promoted from one year of study another, the work to be covered continues being more abstract. Students at higher education levels therefore need more time to dedicate to their studies as they also prepare for a more abstract content. This study therefore was conducted to determine the correlation between a student’s year of study and the rate at which they updated their status on face book. This research was done by use of a survey. The survey was done via the internet on survey monkey. The hypothesis for this study was to determine the correlation that existed between a student’s year of study and the frequency with which a student updated face book status. It was however predicted that as the year of study increases for a student, the frequency of face book updates would decrease. This prediction was made with the basis that as the year of study increases, a student continues being more occupied with studies. It was also believed that as a student moves up the various levels of studies, they also became more involved with other issues in life apart from the social networks. There was thus an idea that there is a negative correlation between a student’s year of study and the rate at which they updated their Facebook status. Method This research used survey method. In the survey, thirty male students and thirty female students were involved. These students were from saint Elizabeth University College. This college is located in Morris Town, New Jersey. The survey was done via the internet on survey monkey. In this survey, students who were willing to participate were advised to log in to a page that would enable the researcher follow them on Facebook. By doing this, the students allowed the researcher to keep a record of all times when they were logged in to Facebook and also check their status. It was thus possible to record the total number of times that a student changed Facebook status in one week. The participants were given extra credit as a way of ensuring that they participated out of their own free will. The policy of providing extra credit also helped the researcher to get the required number of participants easily. Those students who had subscribed to the exercise would just go on with their normal daily activities, without having to be physically present for the survey. The results were automatic and the researcher only used to observe and make a record. This method allowed very minimal chance for the respondents to manipulate the results. It also made them feel free to participate because little time was spent in the process. The process did not cost anything to the respondents too. We can therefore say that this method was appropriate for the study. Hypothesis The hypothesis for this experiment was that there is a negative correlation between a student’s year of study and the rate at which the student updates their status on Facebook. The experiment had to be conducted in order to prove or disapprove this hypothesis. If the results didn’t support the hypothesis, then we would have to reject the null hypothesis and accept the alternative. The alternative hypothesis would always be true if the null hypothesis was not true. Results In this experiment, a R test was used to determine whether a student’s year of study affected the rate at which they updated their Facebook status. According to the results that were recorded, there is a moderate correlation between the year of study and the rate at which the students updated their Facebook status. The results of the study were analyzed and the appropriate decision was made based on these results. R value was evaluated and found to be forty seven. R= 47. This indicated that there was average correlation between a student’s year of study and the rate at which their facebook status were updated. These results are believed to be a true representation of the actual situation in saint Elizabeth University College. These results were also obtained at 0.05 degrees of freedom. This means that the calculations were done and conclusions made at quite a low allowable amount of error. The small confidence interval assisted in making error as small as possible. Discussion Due to the error in the survey that was conducted online, it was quite difficult to collect all the data. The study, therefore did not concentrate on the initial hypothesis. Instead, the research was modified to look at the correlation that exists between a student’s year of study and the rate at which they updated their Facebook status within a given period of time. This research was conducted on a total of sixty students over a period of two weeks. The findings of the report are believed to represent the actual state of issues at the college. The calculations that have been made in this case were done at a very small level of significance. This was set to be so in order to ensure that minimum error was accommodated in the results (Shi, N., & Tao, J. 2008). The report shows that there is a relatively positive correlation between the year of study and Facebook use frequency. These results meant that the earlier assumption is not true. The earlier assumption was that a negative correlation exists between the year of study for a student and the rate at which the student updated their Facebook status. We therefore concluded that as the year of study for a student increased, the rate at which they updated their Facebook status also tended to increase. The increase was moderate. We can attribute this state of issues to the fact that as students continue staying in the college, they get used to the normal ways of doing things and get free from the first time excitement. They are therefore free to interact with others in the social media. A template on the year of study versus the rate of face book status update year of study 1st year 2nd year 3rd year 4th year correlation 0.3203 0.356325 1.39405 1.22340 Efficiency of method used 98% 98% 98% 98% rate of face book status update 44% 46% 45% 47% regression 2.9 2.9 2.3 3.3 Rate of Facebook status update by college students Data collected by observation Reference Shi, N., & Tao, J. (2008). Statistical hypothesis testing: theory and methods. Singapore: World Scientific Pub. Read More