Week 5 - Kaitlin

 Hi everyone, 

I'm happy to report that I have finalized my research question, as well as my hypothesis. I decided to focus my research on understand if decreased face to face contact influences social structures. This lead to a more focused research question: does perception of social support increase or decrease when in person contact is minimized? My hypothesis is currently: social support is decreased when in person contact is minimized, which I based off of results from other studies which were similar to my research topic. 

One detail in my methods that I hope to iron out, and would appreciate feedback on is, currently I've categorized type of contact the study participant has with an individual as in person/face to face or not in person/digital communication. However, as I was writing my assignment, I realized that communication forms, such as zoom or FaceTime can use face to face interaction while still being digital. This has lead me to ponder on which category these types of communication would fall under and I would love to hear what you both think! 

Comments

  1. ErinaOctober 19, 2020 at 1:38 AM

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  2. ErinaOctober 19, 2020 at 1:39 AM


    ErinaOctober 19, 2020 at 1:38 AM
    Hi Kaitlin,

    I think your research question is really interesting. We both appear to be interested in social support and its relation with in-person contact vs. digital contact, but we are approaching the topic from different angles.

    In terms of your question, I think you could define what features face to face contact involve (i.e. gesture, intonation, facial expression, speech) and examine which of these features are also present in different digital communication forms.

    Another factor that could be important is something I have noticed this term. As we are fully remote, I think there's a difference in social support depending on whether the people communicating with each other knew each other beforehand (met in a face to face environment) or not. This term has shown that forming an initial connection with someone is harder even when communicating via videoconferencing because you never met them in person before so you don't catch all their behavioral cues. And then of course, there's the issue of technology issues like bad connectivity.

    Erina

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    1. KaitlinOctober 29, 2020 at 7:55 AM

      Hi Erina, I haven't considered looking at initial versus continuous contact, that sounds like a very interesting and relevant area to pursue. I'll definitely have to revisit my proposal and consider if I can fit that in, or perhaps it could be it's own study!

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  3. AdenNovember 5, 2020 at 10:27 AM

    Hi Kaitlin,

    I think this is a rally interesting question. I think that by definition, face to face means that people are together physically in the same room. It would be interesting to see if there are any research papers and topics that discuss the differences between in person versus digital meetings. We probably all have experience with video chatting with people in different places, even before the pandemic. I have always found that it is never the same and that people cannot form the same social bonds over technology as we can when we are in person. I think it would be useful to include some form of discussion on this topic in your papers so that terms are properly defined.

    Aden

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