Hawaii Pacific Social Media

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Past research has proved that people are relying a great deal on the Internet and to retrieve information, and that the most main users of this technology is college students (Pew Research Center, 2002). The purpose of this study will examine how college students of Hawaii Pacific University (HPU) have adopted social media. This study will modify a previous study that was done in 2003 by Metzger, Flanagin & Zwarum. Though the previous study has not included the survey questions, by examining the study, and looking at the measurements they used, it is possible to reconstruct the items from it. Nevertheless, there are additional survey questions which were added, and the new questions are targeting the Social Media Networking sites, not the Internet. …show more content…
The Institute for International Education ranks HPU as one of the top universities around the world for international diversity. HPU has a huge diversity with students from all 50 states and nearly 80 countries (HPU, 2013).
In this study the participants are HPU undergraduate and graduate students, the target age is between 18-25 and 25-34 years old, however, the participants have the opportunity to choose 35-44 and 44 or older as well. If the participants are not eligible they will still be allowed to do the survey, by doing so, it will help with this study by looking at if there are any differences between age groups when the results are being analyzed. Participants were asked questions regarding biographical information, which provided age, gender and citizenship. To obtain information regarding whenever or not HPU college students question are on social networking sites, questions such as question 4 “Are you a member of any Social Networking sites?” was asked.

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In this survey, the questions that have been adopted are changed from the Internet to social networking sites such as Facebook, to see how HPU college students adopt this. This survey will collect information about demographic, gender, age, a measure of social media use, and the participants would also select what best describes them regarding Facebook.
The students rated the frequency on how often they used social media for any purpose. The response choices included “never”, “less than once a week,” “about once a week”, “several times a week”, and “every day”. The frequency of use for the specific purposes was measured in a five point likert-scale ranging from 1=”never” to 5=”every day”. An open-ended question was added to the survey, participants had reflected on the topic social media throughout the survey and the question was: “Select all that apply to you: Do you use social networking sites to…” the participants could select: “stay in contact with friends, “making new friends”, “just online because everybody else is”, “I don’t use social networking sites” and “Other, please specify”. This question was used to give participants a voice, so they could have a chance to explain why they are or are not on social networking sites. Also, it is important to be open to discovery, which allows this study to find