Should Children Be Allowed to Use Facebook?
A survey on attitudes towards children and safety on Facebook
If you decide to take part in this project, you will take a survey about your attitudes toward children and safety on Facebook at a time that is convenient for you. This survey will take you about 10 to 15 minutes to complete. You have been asked to take part in this study because you are taking a communications class at UNIVERSITY and you were born in the United States; you are also familiar with and spend time on the social networking website Facebook. You do not have to take part in this study. Your participation is voluntary and you may stop at any time.
There are very few risks for taking part in this study. In case you feel uncomfortable answering some of the questions that are presented to you, you can feel free to ignore them. In order to safeguard against people finding out your answers, we are asking you to fill out the survey anonymously. We will not collect your name or any other identifying information on the survey. We will also report information about groups of people, not individual answers, so it will not be possible for readers to know who said what.
You will not gain anything directly by taking part in this study but helping us further our knowledge about the subject in question. You do not have to take part in this study - your participation is voluntary, and you may stop at any time.
If you have any questions about this study, this form or the project, please contact NAME at NUMBER or EMAIL. If you have questions or concerns about your rights as a research participant, please contact the Chair of the Human Subjects Committee of UNIVERSITY. ADDRESS, PHONE, EMAIL.
Please keep a copy of this letter for your records.
Thank you very much for your time.
Sincerely,
INSTRUCTIONS: Please Mark the column that best corresponds to how you feel about the given statement.
No.
Question
Strongly Agree
Agree
Neutral
Disagree
Strongly Disagree
Children under 13 should not be allowed to register for Facebook.
It is difficult for children to become addicted to Facebook.
People behave and act as they really are on Facebook.
Parents should have the ability to monitor their childrens' Facebook activity.
Society today could not survive without social networking or Facebook.
Facebook makes it easier for sexual predators to prey on children.
Schools have a responsibility to teach students about smart social media usage.
Time spent on social media directly takes time and motivation away from more productive pursuits.
Time spent on Facebook has a negative effect on academic performance.
Facebook does not expose children to inappropriate content.
Children should not be able to register for Facebook without their parents' consent.
Facebook provides enough privacy settings to effectively deter predators from seeing childrens' personal information.
Children have the appropriate attitudes and knowledge to keep themselves safe on Facebook.
Children I know do not spend more than an hour a day on Facebook.
Location updates do not make a difference in the safety of children on Facebook.
Children are more prone to depression and suicide if they participate in social media.
Please take a few moments to answer the following questions which will be used for statistical purposes. Shade or check the box which accurately fits your description and fill in the blanks as appropriate.
Are you currently a student? YES NO
What is your Marital Status? Single Married
Divorced Widow/Widower
If single, are you currently in a relationship? _______
Do you have any children? ________ If so, how many? _________
What is your racial or ethnic identification?
White/Caucasian African American Native American
Asian Hispanic/Latino Other ____________________
For the creation of our survey, we took greatly from the interviews we conducted on students and other participants on the subject of children and safety on Facebook. Examining some of the main concerns and social issues that were prevalent and foremost on people's minds, we wished to incorporate these concerns into direct survey questions that helped to focus people's thoughts and attitudes. Protection of children via Facebook is an important factor in many interviewee's minds, as they believe it easy for predators to access private information about students. With that in mind, we factored in people's attitudes about safety of privacy and discretion-related statements into the survey.
Other individuals expressed desires to see school-related initiatives to train social media ethics to children, and noted the perceived prevalence of Facebook addiction in youth. Issues about the age limits and parental responsibility toward their children were also noted - all of these questions and statements were factored into the survey. A combination of concerns raised during the interview and the natural progression of initiatives to address those concerns were the primary metrics by which we created the items found in the survey.
For this survey, our requirements for the population remain the same. The most important metric for these participants is that they are familiar with Facebook and use it on a regular basis - this makes them familiar with the subject matter that they are discussing in the survey itself. Other than that, it will mostly comprise of students and other adults, whether they have children or not, in the local area. I wish to gain as diverse a sample as possible of frequent Facebook users, so that I might gain as broad a perspective as possible on the attitudes toward whether or not children should be on Facebook, and the extent of regulation they should have. We also wish to keep track of how people's responses compare along lines of age, race and gender. One important metric to use is whether or not the subject has children; we wish to discover the difference in responses between those who have children and those who do not on the subject of childrens' exposure to Facebook.
In our pretest draft of the survey, we had many different questions that provided very dramatic solutions for Facebook - "I believe that Facebook should be prohibited to sex offenders," "I believe that parents should have constant access to their childrens' Facebook activity," and so on. However, in the pretest, we found that these questions caused some confusion and ambivalence in the participants - they found themselves very uncomfortable answering the questions, and did not know how to answer. Some believed they showed an unfair bias in the survey itself. With that in mind, we excised those items of the survey, and toned down the language in others.
One particular problem we found was that all of our questions leaned toward a more conservative view of Facebook - this made all the answers have the same general polarity, so participants were more inclined to check "agree strongly" on most or all of the items. In order to avoid confirmation bias, and to force the participants to think about the questions more thoroughly, we changed the language of some of the questions to reflect a more ambiguous and neutral viewpoint on the issue. Questions were alternated and reordered to provide a more even-keeled and objective response that warranted thought about the issue, as the questions did not lead well enough into each other.
