Author Archives: helen.ho

I want to see if the use of social networking sites such as Facebook and twitter pose as a threat to productivity in college. It can be seen as the biggest cause of procrastination among students, as I can relate through first hand experiences.

Some variables that I can use and manipulate would be the amount of time on facebook, the number of people this person is talking to, and how socially involved this person is.

Experimental would best suit this case because we’re looking for more of a qualitative observation of the subject’s concentration in work, rather than a numerical outcome of how long it takes.

I think this experiment would go better with surveys and lab experiment. The surveys will ask subjects how much they go on facebook. The lab experiment will be an observational course. With each subject assigned the same amount of work to be done in one night, some will not have access to a computer (given that the homework is handwritten), while the rest are given a computer with only facebook available. There is also an outsider group communicating to some of these people (ie. talking, sharing photos, music, etc…) while the rest are just on facebook not talking to anyone.

The independent variable will be the work given, as well as facebook and other social networking sites. The dependent variables will be the work produced/the time it took for the work to be completed, as well as how often this person went on facebook during the course of this experiment.

I’m sure that those without the distraction of facebook will have more in depth work, as well as being done in less time. The people that were on facebook but had no one to talk to would take more time, but less time than those who were having conversations on social networking sites.

I’m sure everyone who has some sort of social networking website have often found it very hard to concentrate on their homework, but hopefully, through seeing the results of this experiment, they will realize how time-wasting social networking is when there are priorities and things that need to be done. There is a time and place for everything, and facebook can wait.

Thinking about an experiment that I would be interested in was pretty hard, because I wanted it to be something related to the difficulties I have with school. I thought about the possible conditions this experiment could be held in and i decided a lab experiment was most appropriate. I thought this was pretty unique and fun of an experiment and i didn’t have too much difficulty completing it.