#10 Private vs. Public Communication

Participants
The group plans to recruit twenty to thirty participants for the study. So far, fifteen people have successfully completed the experiment. All of the participants were 18-22 year old Cornell college students with Facebook.com accounts. Each person had been asked individually from among the group members’ friends to participate in the study.


Materials and Procedure
The experiment consisted of three main parts: a task section, a historical data section, and a questionnaire. Before the experiment began, the participants were first briefly told about what they would be expected to do in the study. Then, they were asked to sign a consent form to ensure that their data could be used for future analysis. To guarantee that any personal information would be kept confidential, they were assigned code numbers so that their names would not be tied to the data.

In the task section, the participant was given a procedure form containing six tasks to complete on Facebook. They were required to write messages to their friends using either wall posting or private messaging. The tasks were as follows:
1. Comment on a photo.
2. Ask someone what the homework or reading was for a class. (or ask about a prelim/final)
3. Make an inside joke with a positive connotation.
4. Ask a friend if they have a job or internship after the semester ends.
5. Compliment a friend.
6. Ask someone for more information about an organization that they are in.
After the participants were done with the tasks, they copied and pasted their six messages into a template notepad document that had been provided for them. The participant was told to replace all identifying information with XXX and to indicate for each message whether it was a wall post or private message. They then were asked to sign in to a preexisting Yahoo account made specifically for the experiment. After attaching the notepad document and putting their assigned code number in the subject heading, the participant emailed the Yahoo message to another account made specifically for the study. Throughout the first part, the experimenter waited outside of the room. However, the participants were told that they could ask questions at any time if necessary.

The second part of the experiment was collecting historical data. Each participant was asked to provide five previous wall messages and five previous private messages that they had written in the past. They copied and pasted their messages into another provided template notepad document. Then, using the same procedure and format as in the first part, the participants attached and sent the document by email.

In the final part, the participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire. The first section consisted of a few general questions asking them about their general usage of Facebook – how often they use it and which method of communication they use more frequently. The questionnaire then also contained six sets of questions pertaining to the tasks from part one of the experiment. Each set was the same, and focused on the reasons behind why the participants chose a particular method for that task when communicating on Facebook. Within each section, they were first asked to reflect on how many people they anticipated would read and understand the message they wrote. Then, given a set of potential reasons for choosing each method, they were asked to rate their level of agreement with each statement. Additional sections were available for writing open responses.

At the end, the participants were debriefed about the purpose of the study and given candy bars for participating in the experiment. Overall, the entire process took around 40-50 minutes for each student.


Coding Scheme
Our group is still working on the coding scheme for our project, but we have a few preliminary ideas:
1. Length of messages – number of words, number of complete sentences
2. Number & type of events contained in the message – i.e. trip, party, meeting etc. and whether academic or personal related