Statement Of The Problem

The analyses presented here argon vile on data representing a diverse group of mainly 18- and 19- socio-economic class-old college pupils. The cogitation was conducted in February and March of 2007 at the University of Illinois, Chicago, which is a U. S. urban public enquiry university. 1U. S. News and World Report (2006) ranked this campus among the top 10 field universities as regards campus ethnic diversity, suggesting that this school offers an ideal location for studies of how different kinds of lot use online sites and services.The project had the support of the First-Year Writing Program at the university, ensuring that a representative standard of the schools undergraduate student body would participate. The writing mannikin offered through this program is the only course on campus that is required of all students thus, enrollment in it does not frust come in any selection bias. Out of the 87 sections offered as part of this course, 85 took part in the study, constitu ting a 98% participation rate on the part of course sections. everyplaceall, there was a final response rate of 82% based on all of the students enrolled in the course. In secern to control for condemnation in the program, this article focuses on students in the first-year class. The espouse was administered on paper instead of online. Relying on an online hesitationnaire when studying earnings uses could create a bias toward people who spend more time online, wedded that they whitethorn be more inclined to fill disc everyplace the questionnaire and also, perhaps, more inclined toward higher rates of participation on the sites of query interest.The aver season survey completion time was approximately 30 minutes. The survey included detailed questions about respondents Internet uses (e. g. , experience, types of sites visited, and online activities) and their demographic background. Basic demographic information was measured using standard modes of operationalization. Student s were asked their year of birth, and this information was use to calculate their age, which is included in the samples as a continuous variable.Male is the base gender category (male = 0, female = 1). Information about extend and ethnicity was salt away using the U. S. Census Bureau (2000) questionnaire format, and dummy variables are used in the statistical model, with White as the omitted category. Consistent with work by others, agnate education was used as a measure of socioeconomic side (e. g. , Carlson, Uppal, & Prosser, 2000 Lamborn, Mounts, Steinberg, & Dornbusch, 1991 Stice, Cameron, Hayward, Taylor, & Killen, 1999).Since asking about house celebrate income has limited utility with such an age group (both because students do not know their parents income and because those who live in dorms may not know how to interpret household), and since educational level is unvaried in this group (every respondent is in the first year of college), parental schooling is a helpf ul measure. This information is included in the model as dummy variables, with some college education (but no college degree) as the base.Both the question about living at home with parents and the question about having advance to the Internet at a friends or family subdivisions house is included as a dummy variable, where 1 signals yes to that question, and 0 stands for no. Finally, figures for both hours spent online per week and number of long time a respondent has been an Internet user are logged in the analyses, given that an superfluous hour or year, respectively, likely has diminishing returns as the determine increase. The analyses first consider only the core background characteristics of the user (age, gender, race and ethnicity, parental education).Then, a second model includes information about place setting and experience with use supplementing the core demographic variables. The 1,060 first-year students included in these analyses represent a diverse group of peop le. 2 Fifty- half dozen per centum of the respondents are female, 44% are male. Almost all are 18 or 19 years old, with a mean age of 18. 4 and a median of 18. Fewer than half are White and non-Hispanic. meagrely less than 8% claim African or African-American descent, about 30% are of Asian or Asian American ancestry, and adept under one-fifth are of Hispanic origin.These students come from varied family backgrounds. Over a quarter of respondents substantiate parents whose highest level of education is high school, with an additional 20% whose parents do not have a college degree. While it may seem that sampling from a college population assumes a highly enlightened group, 25% of first-years at this university drop out of college by their second year (Ardinger et al. , 2004) and fewer than half (43. 6%) will graduate within six years of enrollment (University of Illinois-Chicago, 2004).Unlike many U. S.colleges, over half of the students at this university convert from home an d live with their parents (53. 1%). Baseline access and use statistics (Table 1) for the sample suggest that the Internet is not a novel concept in most of these students lives. On average, participants have access to the Internet at over six locations and have been users for over six years. When asked how often they go online, the broad majority report doing so several times a day. They compute spending 15. 5 hours visiting Web sites weekly (excluding email, chat, and VoIP).While there is sure as shooting some amount of variation in access and use, there are no basic barriers standing in the way of these young adults accessing the Internet. Limits may be put on their uses due to other factors (e. g. , the need to section resources at home, limited hours of access due to employment), but they all have basic access. This suggests that traditional concerns about the so-called digital divide do not apply to these students as regards basic availability of the Internet. Thus face at such a wired group of users allows us to hold basic access to digital media constant and focus on differences in details of use instead.