Here is my primary data analysis. This document is including my stakeholder analysis, genre analysis, methodology and data analysis. This is the core of my whole research article. This assignment was divided up into sections to make it easier to work with and accomplish. In the stakeholder analysis I decided my group of stakeholders and chose three specific individuals. Although, by the end of this assignment I changed my stakeholders to academics researching about my topic. My methodology explained the steps I took to get all of my data. My data analysis is my results section and explain what my data actually means and concludes. After this assignment I feel more confident about being able to finish my final article.
Stakeholder Analysis
While doing my research it was
clearly shown that most of the researchers talking about the effects Facebook
has on a students academics have one similar audience. This audience is simply other researchers
talking about the conversation as well.
The main reason I realized this is because of the specific language they
used and the format to their genres. For
example in Effect of Online Social
Networking on Student Academic Performance, Jomon Aliyas Paul found
important data on how Facebook activity relates to GPA that students should be
informed about. However, the graphs and
charts used in the article are confusing for some students to easily
grasp. Most students’ benefit from
reading something more easily understood.
For this reason I have decided to
make my audience of my final research paper students. Specifically, my audience will be
undergraduate college students at the University of Central Florida. I will need to randomly select students to
take my survey I will be creating. Some
examples of stakeholders who will care about my issue are Megan McCormick,
Marissa Durfey, and Emily Undieme.
All three of my stakeholders are
full-time students at UCF. They are all
active Facebook users. This reason
alone is why they will care about my findings on how Facebook will affect
GPA. Most students want to know what
effects something has on them if they frequently use it. They are all in a sorority which forces them
to keep up with grades but at the same time they have to use Facebook to stay
informed with events going on. I want to
educate students with what research is going on about them and how they can
improve their Facebook habits or keep up with what they are doing. To many articles simply state their findings
but don’t state how to apply the information to improve a students
academics.
Genre Analysis
The genres I will be analyzing are all peer reviewed
academic journal articles. The first one
is called, The Relationship Between
Multitasking and Academic Performance by Reynol Junco. The second one is called, The relationship between frequency of
Facebook use, participation in Facebook activities, and student engagement, also
by Reynol Junco and the third article is called, Effect of online social networking on student academic performance, by
Jomon Aliyas Paul. All three articles
are related to my topic. This is because
these authors are my stakeholders and it would appeal to them the best writing
in genres similar to their own. These
researchers will typically be reading other academic articles. They will find these articles more credible
then most because they have been peer-reviewed and published in a journal. Since I will be communicating to these stakeholders
they will best interpret my writing through a peer-reviewed academic article
style.
The three academic peer-reviewed
articles I am analyzing were very similar.
They all included an abstract, an introduction, methods, results,
discussion, conclusion and acknowledgements.
The introductions all include past research that has been done and their
research gap. They all explain why their
article is worth reading and important in the conversation. Their methodology comes next explaining in
specific detail everything they will be doing to answer their research
question. This section will normally
include graphs or charts. Their results
and discussion is when they begin to explain the answer to their research
question from their data. This is where
they begin to bring in some personal opinions into their research. They explain the results of their research
and then explain what they take from it.
Their conclusion is just a big recap of their question, findings, and
end result. They all make sure to tell
the reader what exactly to take from all of their findings and why what they
are saying is important.
The organization of these articles
was also very similar. They were not
very narrative while explaining their issues, more factual. They all proposed a question from a research
gap, showed how they were going to answer it, and then explained the
answer. Everything is right to the
point.
The tone of these articles, like
most, had a more serious tone. They use
certain language that normally only a specific audience will understand and
that audience is normally other researchers.
The language is very formal which helps with the author’s
credibility. They must prove to the
reader that they are professional. These
peer-reviewed articles cannot have the same tone as a letter to your best
friend. Researchers appreciate serious
tones that get straight to the point to prove information. They are also much different than magazine
articles. A popular magazine aims their
audience at common people making it difficult to use serious more complex
language. They would not be able to use
high science terms in one of their articles because it would not suit their
audience. Although it is acceptable to
use such language in a peer-reviewed article because the audience is other
scholars.
The medium of my genre can be both
electronic and print. The articles my
stakeholders are looking at are either from a library or an online database
both are acceptable. In my opinion it is
best to publish a peer-reviewed article online.
In todays society the web is becoming so popular and easy to use that
many people prefer researching and reading on the computer rather than from a
paperback book.
My genres design is very simple and
formal. An easy to read font and size
should be used from a more professional tone.
Paragraphs are used but in-between are headings and subheadings. These headings help to make the article
easier to follow along. The reader will
know the main idea of what is about to be discussed before reading. The abstract is also a big help to get the
reader to understand and see if they are actually interested in reading the
article. It is a small summary of the
author’s research question, findings and why their article is important. An interesting abstract can help make your
article more desirable.
Methodology
When I first chose my topic on
Facebook and academics I knew that’s what I wanted to research but I wasn’t
sure on how I wanted to state my exact, specific question. Once I began researching I found it
interesting that there were findings claiming that Facebook is directly related
to academics. I wanted to explore
exactly why is it related and search for specific reasons. Through my research I found that most of the
data collected was from large surveys done by students online. I feel this type of data can become
inaccurate because students may be in a hurry to answer the surveys questions
or, for this instance, they just can’t remember anything about their time spent
on Facebook.
To start my research I began by going to
the University of Central Florida’s library database website. I typed in key words like, “Facebook”,
“college students”, “academics”, and “effects”.
All of these words helped to refine my search in finding the right
articles. Once I began looking at the
most popular articles I realized that my topic is a hot conversation in todays
society because of the increase of Facebook usage lately. Therefore, it wasn’t hard to find articles
talking about the effects Facebook has on academics. Collecting this data was the easy part but
because this topic is so popular it was very challenging finding a research
gap.
I began to realize that the most popular
way to find data about the effects of Facebook were from surveys. All of the surveys I looked at were very
broad having questions like, “How much time do you spend commenting on Facebook
pictures.” I feel that students may have
answered these questions not being able to remember the correct amount of time
actually spent on the site. For this
reason I find some of their data inaccurate and that a survey can show only a
general idea of their Facebook use. I
have decided to solve this problem by studying myself and finding the specific
effects Facebook has on myself and in turn, relating it to others.
My self-study will be done to collect
specific data on my Facebook usage. I
have created a chart for me to fill out every time I am using Facebook. The study will go on for 3 days and the chart
will be as follows:
|
Time
spent on Fb
|
Productivity
|
Homework
Load
|
Reason/Activity
|
Other/Notes
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Every
time I look at Facebook I will fill out the categories productivity and
homework load with numbers 1-5, 5 being the strongest, and I will simply answer
the other categories. After the
completion of this chart I will be able to see if Facebook is positively or
negatively affecting me. I want to find
if Facebook is a procrastination tool and is only negatively affecting my work
ethic. It could be that Facebook is
worthless and a waste of time.
Data Analysis
After
realizing my research gap is the accuracy of data I have decided I want to
change my stakeholders. With my
stakeholders being students before, I feel that if they want to know the
effects Facebook is having on them they will have to research for
themselves. I also feel that other
researchers will be interested in the way I found my data and would like to
compare it to their own. With that being said, my stakeholders will be Reynol, Junco, Cotten Shelia R., and Jomon Aliyas. They are all researchers studying the effects
of social medias on student’s academics.
After
completing my six-day long self-study I began to notice some obvious patterns
showing up on my table. My goal of the
self-study was to see when Facebook was working in my favor, thus my feeling of
productivity being high, and when it was not working in my favor, thus feeling
of productivity being low. After
analyzing my table it proved that when I had a larger homework load I recorded
a lesser feeling of productivity.
Therefore, when I had a smaller homework load I recorded a greater
feeling of productivity. For example, on
October 29th, I spent ten minutes on Facebook and recorded a five
for productivity and a zero for homework load.
Since I had no homework I felt as if I could enjoy Facebook more because
it wasn’t taking up my time I could have been using for homework. My other example was on October 28th,
I spent fifteen minutes on Facebook feeling no productivity, recording a
one. That day I had to finish my Enc
1102 assignment and study for my Psychology test, therefore, I recorded a five
for homework load. Since I had so much
homework I recorded a one for my productivity because I felt that I was wasting
my time I could be using towards school on Facebook.
This pattern of high productivity
when low homework load and low productivity when high homework load continued
throughout the whole six days. These
data results made it obvious that Facebook is only positive during certain
times, under certain circumstances and negative during the opposite. My personal research proves that Facebook
should only be used when I don’t have much homework. Otherwise, it is proven to have no
productivity and only cause procrastination.
I did note that I seemed to use Facebook more when I had a high amount
of homework. This is because I seem to
use Facebook as a big procrastination tool.
Since most of my homework is done on
the computer Facebook becomes easily accessible. This accessibility is the reason for Facebook
procrastination. The ten through
fifteen-minute intervals I spent on Facebook is valuable time I’m losing that
could be spent on homework. I feel that
this study has proven Facebook is more of a negative effect than positive. This is because the times I use Facebook the
most is when I should be doing homework instead. Therefore, if I ditched Facebook I would have
more study and homework time.
All of my data also helped to prove
some of the other researchers results.
For example, Reynol Junco found that Facebook negatively effected GPA in
his article, The Relationship Between
Multitasking and Academic Performance. When
I chose to be on Facebook rather than doing homework or studying is when my GPA
is negatively affected. My self-study
was able to show very accurate results of data unlike the large surveys given
to students.
Works Cited
Jomon
Aliyas, Paul, Baker Hope M., and Cochran Justin Daniel. "Effect Of Online
Social
Networking On Student Academic Performance."
Computers In Human Behavior 28.(n.d.): 2117-2127. ScienceDirect. Web. 25 Oct.
2012.
Reynol,
Junco. "The Relationship Between Frequency Of Facebook Use, Participation
In
Facebook Activities, And Student Engagement."
Computers & Education 58.(n.d.): 162-171. ScienceDirect. Web. 25 Oct. 2012.
Reynol,
Junco, and Cotten Shelia R. "No A 4 U: The Relationship Between
Multitasking And
Academic Performance." Computers & Education
59.(n.d.): 505-514. ScienceDirect.
Web. 25 Oct. 2012.
Appendix
1
|
Time spent on FB
10/25
|
Productivity
|
Homework Load
|
Reason/Activity
|
Other/Notes
|
|
10mins
|
2
|
4
|
Checking notifications, reading
statuses
|
Procrastinating my homework
|
|
15mins
|
4
|
1
|
Checking notifications, reading
statuses, looking at pictures
|
|
|
5mins
|
4
|
1
|
Reading messages
|
|
|
10/26
10mins
|
3
|
1
|
Checking notifications, reading
statuses
|
|
|
15mins
|
3
|
1
|
Checking notifications, reading
statuses
|
|
|
10mins
|
3
|
1
|
Checking notifications, reading
statuses
|
|
|
5mins
|
4
|
1
|
Checking notifications, reading
statuses, looking at pictures
|
|
|
10/27
5mins
|
3
|
1
|
Updating status
|
|
|
5mins
|
4
|
1
|
Checking notifications, reading
statuses
|
|
|
15mins
|
3
|
2
|
Checking notifications, reading
statuses
|
|
|
5mins
|
4
|
2
|
Looking at pictures
|
|
|
10/28
5mins
|
2
|
4
|
Checking notifications, reading
statuses
|
|
|
15mins
|
1
|
5
|
Checking notifications, reading
statuses, looking at pictures, Facebook chatting
|
Procrastinating my homework
|
|
10mins
|
1
|
5
|
Checking notifications, reading
statuses, looking at pictures, Facebook chatting
|
|
|
10mins
|
1
|
4
|
Checking notifications, reading
statuses, looking at pictures, Facebook chatting
|
Did a little of homework
assignment
|
|
5mins
|
2
|
2
|
Checking notifications, reading
statuses
|
Homework almost finished
|
|
10/29
5mins
|
4
|
1
|
Checking notifications, reading
statuses, looking at pictures
|
|
|
10mins
|
5
|
0
|
Checking notifications, reading
statuses, looking at pictures, Facebook chatting
|
No Homework!
|
|
5mins
|
5
|
1
|
Checking notifications, reading
statuses, looking at pictures
|
|
|
10/30
10mins
|
2
|
4
|
Checking notifications, reading
statuses, looking at pictures, Facebook chatting
|
|
|
5mins
|
1
|
4
|
Checking notifications
|
|
|
5mins
|
1
|
4
|
Checking notifications, reading
statuses
|
|
|
5mins
|
1
|
4
|
Looking at pictures
|
|
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