Help My Grad Survey Research Methods Students With a Class Survey Project

Would you like to help with some academic research to help graduate students?


The following is a link to an online voluntary and confidential survey being conducted as part of a class research project. We are trying to get as many responses as possible and I am asking your help in getting this done. If you are interested in responding to this survey and you are an employed adult of at least 19 years of age, click on this link and read in the information page regarding the research. I appreciate your time. Next, I would like you to consider reposting information to your social networks about this post. Please repost, retweet, etc. the original tweet without adding any additional text. Thanks so much for your help on this research project!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/UAB-SOC-ICT-USE-STUDY

If you have any questions, concerns, or comments, please contact us by email at uab.tech.work@gmail.com or contact the principal investigator, Shelia R. Cotten, Ph.D. at 205-934-8678.

If you have questions about your rights as a research participant, or concerns or complaints about the research, you may contact Ms. Denise H. Ball. Ms. Ball is the Interim Director of the Office of the Institutional Review Board for Human Use (OIRB) at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Ms. Ball may be reached at (205) 934-3789 or 1-800-822-8816. If calling the toll-free number, press the option for “all other calls” or for an operator/attendant and ask for extension 4-3789. Regular hours for the Office of the IRB are 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. CT, Monday through Friday. You may also call this number in the event the research staff cannot be reached or you wish to talk to someone else. Thank you in advance for your help with this study.

Could you take an email sabbatical?

I like danah's advice on how to actually take an email sabbatical. See: How To Take An Email Sabbatical - by danah boyd. However, I've never been able to do it completely. Even when I'm on vacation, I still check in for my email on a daily (usually more than once a day) basis.

And, having email on my mobile phone makes it so much easier to check email now! And, it makes it easier to get rid of junk email very quickly.

I suspect that my various projects would go on even if I didn't check in and respond to email queries, issues, etc. However, I don't know if they would proceed as smoothly if I didn't do this.

I hope to one day be able to do what danah suggests and take an email sabbatical. What about those of you who are tethered to your technological devices, could you take an email sabbatical? Or, for younger generations, a texting sabbatical?

Postdoctoral Fellowship in Social Impacts of Technology at UAB

Please pass along this info to those who may be interested. Thanks!

Dr. Shelia Cotten, a professor in the Sociology and Social Work department at the University of Alabama, Birmingham (UAB), is seeking to hire a Postdoctoral Fellow for a 1-2 year postdoc position. The position is available immediately but the start date is somewhat negotiable. The postdoc will work with Dr. Cotten to analyze data from existing research projects and to collect survey, interview, and observational data on upcoming research projects. Projects focus on technology usage across the life course and the social impacts of this usage, thus experience studying either specific age groups, and/or the impacts of technology use, would be preferable but is not required. Dr. Cotten, with funding from the National Science Foundation, is leading the largest study of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO laptop dissemination in the United States. She also has a large NIA grant studying the impacts on quality of life of training older adults in assisted and independent living communities to use computers and the Internet.


A doctoral degree in Sociology, Psychology, Communication, New Media, or a related field is required before beginning the postdoctoral fellowship. Candidates must have (1) strong quantitative and/or qualitative analysis skills, (2) experience writing manuscripts, and (3) good organizational and time management skills. Prior publication and grant writing experience will enhance the application.

The Postdoctoral Fellow is a 12 month, full-time appointment, with salary up to $45,000 depending upon qualifications. Benefits are also provided. See http://www.postdocs.uab.edu/ for more information on postdoc benefits at UAB. Funding may be available to support travel for conference presentations.

Submit the following application materials as attachments via email to Dr. Shelia Cotten - cotten@uab.edu. Please use the following email subject line: Technology Postdoc Position.

- Cover letter describing training, skills, research interests and how they fit with those described in the position advertisement, and why you’re interested in this position.

- Names and contact information for three references

- An up to date curriculum vitae

For those candidates who apply before August 12, 2010, please note whether you will be attending the American Sociological Association annual meeting in Atlanta in case Dr. Cotten would like to meet with you there.

Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until a suitable candidate is selected.

UAB is a Carnegie designated RU/VH: Research University institution with a population of approximately 17,000 undergraduate and graduate students. UAB’s Medical School is in the top 25 in the U.S. The Department of Sociology and Social Work houses the Center for Social Medicine and is affiliated with the Lister Hill Center for Health Policy, the Center for Aging, and others. The Department offers Bachelor’s degrees in Sociology, Social Work, and Social Psychology, the MA in Sociology, and the Ph.D. in Medical Sociology. Metropolitan Birmingham is home to over 1 million people and is at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, with plentiful cultural and recreational opportunities.

Cyber Seniors and Health

As some of you know, I have an NIA grant to go into assisted living communities (ALFs) to train older adults to use computers and the Internet and to assess the impact on their quality of life over time. We finished 6 weeks of training in our first assisted living community yesterday afternoon. The 6 weeks flew by so fast! We learned a huge amount about best practices in training in ALFs. The participants were phenomenal! I hope the skills we helped them acquire will definitely positively impact their quality of life!



We did a debriefing with them at the end of class yesterday to find out their thoughts on ways to enhance the training, how it had impacted them thus far, etc. One person said: "You've made us feel like we're part of the world again." Another noted that "We'd opened up the world for them." They are an amazing group!



The UAB Media Relations rep had issued a local press release to see if any local TV stations wanted to come out to talk to us. I was asked to be on the local Fox news at noon yesterday to talk about the study. I haven't been able to find any online link to the interview but below is one that the local ABC station did. Watch the video if you get a chance. I'm also scheduled to be on Fox' Good Day Alabama Monday morning.



Cyber Seniors: How the Internet Can Affect Health

Textual Harassment

I was interviewed by the local CBS station yesterday for a story related to cyberstalking, etc. They used one sentence of what I said. Oh well...

Textual Harassment

My New Grant

I just found out this week that a grant I'd submitted to NIH/NIA for a big randomized trial project has been funded. The goal of the project is to go into assisted living facilities, train older adults to use computers and the Internet, and assess the impacts on various aspects of their quality of life over time. I think it will be a great project, which will hopefully have a very positive impact on quality of life among older adults.

I'll report more info on it as the plans progress.

Ambient Awareness and Intimacy

My friend Zeynep was quoted in a NY Times Magazine article, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin, on the use of Facebook. The article is a good read and the author discusses how people are increasingly using Facebook and other technologies to monitor the behaviors of others (both strong and weak ties).

I was at a department party tonite and a colleague's husband was there. On his FB status update today he noted that he'd gone to a bootcamp workout class this morning and he was really out of shape. I asked him about it at the party and I could tell that he was surprised that I knew about it. I then mentioned that I saw his status update on FB. He laughed; he's new to FB. I'm guessing his ambient awareness level will increase over time.

How do you use FB or other technologies to stay in contact with others? Do you like having ambient awareness and/or intimacy?

How Do ICTs Impact Your Relationships?

I am sitting here awake at almost 3 AM (don't ask why I'm awake at this hour!) and looking at some blogs that I haven't taken the time to peruse lately. There was an interesting blog posting in the Juggle from a week or so ago. The topic was 'doing marriage by email' (or something similar) - http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2008/06/12/conducting-marriage-by-email/.

Do you use email, texting, IMing, etc. in your relationships? If so, how often do you use it/them? And, what impact do you think using these information and communication technologies (ICTs for short) applications has on your relationships? And, how do the impacts vary as a function of the type of relationship (ex. spouse vs. friend vs. cousin who lives in Boise)?

Everywhere and Nowhere

is the title to a recent article in the Economist (http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10880936&CFID=16372671&CFTOKEN=2db6454d1e4410b6-E2749052-B27C-BB00-0129AE0EB9D19200) about the future ubiquity of online social life. I don't read the Economist often; however, I saw a link to this article in a daily post that I receive about youth and media usage. I wonder how our life will be different in 3, 5, and 10 years from now in terms of our use of online activities.

A year ago I didn't blog. My daughter already knows at some level what email is and she's only 2. What will individuals, particularly youth, be doing with online activities in the coming years? A researcher from Forrester Research quoted in the article in the Economist suggests that there won't be a variety of different social networking sites, groups, etc. that are hard to link together. They will be anywhere and everywhere and seamlessly integrated. That's a nice idea in many ways. A friend of mine (and a blogger who inspired me to start blogging) just had a baby. She sent out emails to different groups, posted some pix on her blog, and posted a lot more pix on her Facebook page. Now, if I didn't have access to the Facebook page, I'd never (well, not as quickly anyway : ) have seen the additional beautiful pix of her new baby and family (thanks R.!).

Perhaps in the future there'll be better linkages so that we don't have to be members of Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Flickr, and/or other sites in order to obtain the latest news and notes on our network members. Will that be a good thing or a bad thing?

What do you think? Do you want more seamless integration and availability of information about members of your social networks? And, for others to have the availability of this information about you?

ICT Use in Public Places

Today and last Tuesday morning I stopped by Panera Bread after dropping Callen off at school. I decided it would be nice to have a bagel and tea, and work a little while enjoying the atmosphere.

I've been amazed both times at (1) how busy Panera is at that time in the morning and (2) how many people are using information and communication technologies (ICTs) at Panera. It is nice that they have free wireless access so you can eat, work, and surf the web, check email, etc.

There has been such an interesting variety of people using ICTs in Panera each morning I've been there. There are some students, a range of young adults on a variety of cell phones and computers, and a good number of middle aged professionals (dressed in business attire) meeting in small groups, with their laptops, PDAs, etc.

I just wonder what jobs these people have and how mobile on the go they are. They all seem busy working when I've observed them.

Just some thoughts on a beautiful fall morning. . .

In The News

I was interviewed via phone yesterday morning for a story a reporter is doing on social networking sites (SNS - ex. Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc.). She had looked at some profiles on Bebo and was surprised at the level of profanity and the nature of some of the pictures on this SNS. I'm not all that familiar with Bebo, so couldn't really comment much on that SNS specifically. She was also interested in the impact of children viewing profanity and other things on these sites.

One of the things the reporter wondered was whether there was an age that was too young for children to use SNS. That is a good question. There are now so many different sites available and so many ways to form networks related to particular interests/topics on any given site that they could potentially be interesting to children of almost all ages who are capable of understanding how to use a computer.

So, I wonder, at what age will you let your children use social networking sites? My 22 month old already loves playing with the computer when we're on it. I'm not ready for her to have her own website or blog yet, but maybe soon : )

I wonder what the future will hold for the youth of today in terms of technology and the social impacts of technology. Any thoughts on this topic?