Final questionnaire

 

Here you find the presentation of our questionnaire

 

You will find our web-based questionnaire from two separate links: first link refers to the questions related to the research subject and second link is to the demo block questions.

First Part Of The Survey

Second Part Of The Survey

 

Introduction letter for our questionnaire will be as following:

Globalisation, new technologies and demographic developments constitute an enormous challenge in contemporary societies. One of the new technology challenges is the growing role of the Internet in people’s lives. Today the Internet is part and parcel of our work and study as well as it is used for other purposes in our every-day life. We read the newspapers on-line, we visit websites of different institutions and organizations we deal with in managing our businesses, and we even do our shopping in the Internet. Besides more and more of our communication with other people is facilitated by the Internet or other new technologies.

Does this mean that we go out less and we meet fewer people? Does it leads to the point that one day we do not have anyone to lean on when we have problems or we don’t have a companion to share our joys? Or could the affect of new technologies be vice versa? Does the Internet and other ICT represent a new way to be social and the challenges in reality turn out to be new opportunities?

The aim of this survey research is to find out does the Internet affect the ways how people are communicating and socializing with other people and if so, then how those two aspects of human life in contemporary societies are related to each other? The survey is conducted among students, professors, lecturers and other university workers in four countries: Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Turkey. The questionnaire is anonymous and all data will be treated confidentially, so please do not hesitate to fill up the questionnaire and give your contribution to an international research. The research team will be very grateful for your time and effort.

Research aim and questions

The aim of our survey research is to find out does the Internet affect the ways how people are communicating and socialising with other people and if the patterns of using the Internet are related to people’s sociability then what is the nature of this relationship.

The overall research question of our hypothetical research project is: Do people turn into antisocial creatures because of spending most of their time on-line or is the Internet just a new way to be social?

There are good arguments for the fact that it could have bad influence on peoples’ sociability if they most of their time spend behind computers but equally good arguments are for the opposite, that the internet only will create new ways for being social. There can also be found a lot of examples proving the two sides. Both points of views are acceptable and suitable for hypothesis for our research. The aim will be to find out which of the two postures is more probable and what kind of variables might have some spurious effect on the relationships between Internet usage and sociability.

Research strategy

The survey will be conducted among students, professors, lecturers and other university workers in four countries: Estonia, Poland, Lithuania and Turkey. The respondents will be sent an e-mail with introduction letter and they will be asked to fill up a web-based questionnaire. Lists for e-mail addresses of both students and university workers will be asked for questionnaire distribution from server holders in different universities.

Web-based questionnaire allows collecting data directly into a data-base; no data insertion phase is needed. Data set will then be converted into SPSS and comparative data analysis will be conducted with the aim to test our hypotheses.

Research instrument

The aim of the questionnaire is to get the information that allows us on the one hand to differentiate the respondents by their internet exploitation habits and on the other hand to analyze how different groups vary in their sociability. Social-demographical items included in the end will help us to analyze both the internet usage and sociability indicators more thoroughly.

The questionnaire elaborated to collect the data needed for empirical testing of our hypotheses includes first the items for classifying individuals into groups according to intensity and purposes the internet is used for. In the first part there belong to items which measure following aspects:

– How often/how much the respondents use the Internet?

– For what purposes the respondents use the Internet?

– Where the respondents use the Internet?

Second there are items that are supposed to measure also some more subjective aspects connected to the use of Internet meant to give information on possible advances and dangers connected to the Internet. There are included indicators on persons’ evaluations on the Internet measured as following aspects:

– How needed is the Internet considered to be for the respondents personally (for people generally)?

– How effective is the Internet considered to be for different purposes?

– Do the respondents consider Internet to be dangerous in respect of peoples’ and/or their own sociability?

Third concept operationalised in our questionnaire is sociability. The research instrument comprises items which measure:

– How social the respondents are (with whom and how intensively they interact)

– How they prefer to interact with different people in their lives