Smartphones and New Friends

Experiment conducted out of Modesto Junior College during the spring of 2020 analyzing if a relationship exists between phone use in social settings and amount of new friends made, titled "Smartphones: The Connection College Students Make".

Smartphones_ The Connections College Students Make

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About The Study

This is the culmination of work my research group of three compiled over the course of a semester. Conducting research in a group allowed for team building, collaboration, and work designation experience. Research design and data manipulation were the main roles I was assigned to. In doing so I curated an online survey using Google Forms featuring demographic questions, filler questions, and questions asking about habits/quantity of new friends made, and time on a smartphone. Using the data an ANOVA test was ran with SPSS to test for any significance within the findings (more on findings in Results section).

Research Design

A survey was sent out to fellow Modesto Junior College students and those who consented were selected to participate if they met the requirement of owning a smartphone. A survey on Google Forms was used as the assessment to collect new friends made since starting MJC, and time spent on a smartphone at school.

Results

We hypothesized those who use their smartphone in a social setting would have fewer new connections made compared to those who don't use their smartphone. Results did not show a significant difference of new connections made among participants at the p<.05 level as determined by one way ANOVA [F(2,9) =0.642, p=0.548]. These findings go against previous results finding a smartphone negatively effects social cues like smiling and eye contact. Research has found using a smartphone adds a presumption of privacy along with a limited capacity for others. Future research should use more exact measures of connections made rather than using a wide window of numbers possible. Additionally, use a larger sample size, along with more questions directed at assessing a a distinct group for further examination.

Prison Sentence and Depression Levels

A proposal experiment developed in the spring of 2021 titled "Lifetime Prison Sentence and Levels of Depression" seeking to answer the research question, "Does the duration of a life sentence impact a prisoner’s level of depression?".

Lifetime Prison Sentence and Levels of Depression.docx

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Experimental Design

Beginning with participants (N= 400), 4 prisons will be chosen. From there 4 stratified samples are created (0-9 years, 10-19 years, 20-29 years, and life sentence) with 100 participants in each. Before inmates are accepted into the experiment, they must be admitted by a correctional officer, and then randomly chosen to be apart of the study through a randomizer. Ideally the same amount of participants from each prison are in each strata.

All participants go under the same procedures throughout the study. Researcher gives the assessment with a pen, then asks participants to answer as honestly as possible and returns on a 30 minute basis until completion.

Participants will respond to a 20 item self-report inventory. The inventory will be adapted from the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and the Beck Hopelessness Scale. 10 items will be used from the BDI in which participants will be asked to rate symptoms and attitudes of depression on a scale of 0-3, best reflecting how they feel. The remaining 10 items will be from the Beck Hopelessness Scale, in which participants will respond with “true” or “false” to pessimistic and optimistic statements.

Data Analysis

Central tendency and measure of dispersion for length of incarceration and levels of depression will be obtained from analysis of quantitative data. An ANOVA or regression test will be conducted to determine where the differences are between the groups. To conclude the strength of the relationship between incarceration and depression we will use a regression line and correlational test to find out the strength of correlation. A t-test will be run on the assessment results to evaluate if a significant difference exists between our participants, incarcerated individuals, and the general public, individuals not currently incarcerated

Screen Time and Social Anxiety

Study conducted summer of 2021 titled, "The Correlation Between Screen Time and Level of Social Anxiety in College Students" examining the relationship between total time spent on electronic devices and levels of social anxiety.

The Correlation Between Screen Time and Level of Social Anxiety in College Students

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Research Design

Students at California State University, Stanislaus, were collected online (N= 39) through a cloud research database, SONA. SONA took participants to the assessment created on Qualtrics, which gathered: participants screen time with two open ended questions, the number of hours per day and number of days per week electronic media was used. After testing for screen time, social anxiety was measured using the Liebowitz Scale, which assesses the way social anxiety plays a role in a person’s life across a variety of situations. We hypothesized that if daily screen time increased, then social anxiety scores would also increase.

A Pearson’s correlation coefficient was conducted using SPSS to examine the relationship between total weekly screen-time (M = 38.79, SD = 22.73) and total social anxiety scores (M = 105.64, SD = 24.63). There was no statistically significant relationship between total screen-time and social anxiety scores; r(37) = .05, p = .77.

Implications

The results indicate the hypothesis was not supported. Previous research consistently showed a significant correlation between depression and screen time, indicating a need to explore further. Future research should look to have an increased sample size, double to triple the amount used in the present study. Additionally, collecting information regarding the purpose of electronic media use, and type of media used should be considered.

An extraneous variable that we did not control for that may have played a role in anxiety levels was COVID-19.