Technology and Effects on Recreation and Leisure Behavior 1

Survey Research Report and Final Recommendations (Phase III)

Technology and Effects on Recreation and Leisure Behavior 2

Methodology
Focus Group Themes
Following the focus group, we reviewed the transcript and pulled three main themes,
social interaction, time, and privacy. Several of the participants of the focus group assumed we
were talking about phone use and social media when we discussed technology. This is where our
first theme came from. It starts from simple technology use in daily life to social media and
school to communication which correspond into social interaction. This is a theme we ultimately
expected from the focus group. Our second theme was time. This was an un-expected theme we
pulled. Several of the focus group members talked about technology as a distraction and the
convenience of it whether it was to simply communicate with others or made school work
simpler. We found through the focus group that there was not one person who spent less than an
hour in front of a screen a day whether that was a phone, computer, or TV. Our third main theme
we pulled was privacy. The group members discussed the new apps on phones that you are able
to download in order to track someone or be tracked yourself. The privacy theme was also
brought up through pictures how your phone automatically knows the location it was taken,
Facebook people near you, GPS, Instagram and Snapchat. We choose these three main specific
themes to focus on in our survey because we wanted to narrow our research to what our sample
group thought was the most important contributions and disadvantages of technology use. If this
class was longer, we would have gone into further research after the survey results to narrow our
topic even more.

Technology and Effects on Recreation and Leisure Behavior 3

Copy of Survey

EVAL 425 Survey

Female

Other

Prefer Not to State

3. During the course of an average day, how many hours, would you estimate, you spend in front
of a screen (includes TV, computer, cell phone, etc.)
_____________________
4. Do you think that technology use (such as social media) is helpful or harmful to your
recreation habits? (please circle one)
Helpful

Neutral

Harmful

5. Do you think technology poses a distraction in class? (1 strongly agree, 5 strongly disagree).
1

6. Do you think that access to technology (such as laptops, phones, etc.) is helpful in class? (1
very helpful, 5 not helpful at all).
1

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7. Please rate this statement: I often feel distracted in class because of my phone
Agree

Neutral

Disagree

8. Please rate this statement: social media helps me participate in recreational activities
(example: events posted on Facebook)1 being strongly disagree and 5 being strongly agree.
1

9. How often do use your phone to communicate (texts, calls, snapchat, or other social media)
during recreational activities?
Always

Sometimes

Never

10. Do you use apps during recreation that help you (examples: fitBit, MapMyFitness, etc.)
Sometimes

Usually

Always Never

11. Please rate this statement on a scale of 1-5: technology use during recreation takes away
from the activity (1 not harmful to activity at all, 5 very harmful to the activity)
1

12. Please rate this statement: I dont feel comfortable leaving my home without my phone
Agree

Disagree

Neutral

13. Please rate this statement: having my phone with me makes me feel safe

Yes

No

Neutral

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12. When driving to a place you have never been, how often do you use a navigation app (google
maps, apple maps) to navigate?
Never

Sometimes

Always

13. Please rate this statement: because of my phone, others often know where I am or what I am
doing (1 strongly agree, 5 strongly disagree)
1

14. Please rate this statement: I feel that my phone invades my privacy
Never

Sometimes

Always

15. How often can others access you because of your phone
Never

Rarely Sometimes

Almost Always

Always

Rationale:
For our survey on How Technology Effects the Behavior and Leisure on 425 RCLS
Students, we used likert scales and both quantitative and qualitative data. We as a group choose
to not fully incorporate more than 1 quantitative data question because it would not have
contributed to the overall outcome of the survey. Along with the likert scales and quantitative and
qualitative data we incorporated demographic questions such as age and gender identity. Age and
gender identity were included to pull the information and compare and contrast certain trends.
We did not include recreation major as an option for demographics because it did not affect the
direction of our research question.
During the focus group, they viewed our topic as negative and their answers to our
questions in the beginning went from not using technology during recreational activities, and

Technology and Effects on Recreation and Leisure Behavior 6

then at the end of the focus group their answers changed to yes they do use technology during
recreational activities. Because of this we purposely left one important thing out on our survey,
the research question. We believed that if we were to put our research question onto the survey,
the class would think of our topic negatively and make their answers lean more towards negative
than positive.

Likert Scales
Out of our 15 question survey, 5 questions were likert scale. None of the questions were
completely alike meaning that some were on a scale from 1 being strong agree and 5 being
strongly disagree to 1 being strong disagree to 5 being strongly agree. 3 of the 5 likert scale
questions were please rate your statements. All of our themes were incorporated into a likert
scale questions in order to get measureable data survey results.
Quantitative Data
Our survey specifically only had one quantitative data question because any more than
that would not have correlated to the overall themes we gained from the focus group. The one
quantitative question we incorporated was during the course of an average day, how many
hours, would you estimate, you spend in front of a screen (includes TV, computer, cell phone,
etc.). This question was essential for our survey because of the follow up qualitative questions.
Screen time was highly dependent on the course of the week which could be the amount of
homework that needed to be turned in. It was dependent on exams, boredom, distraction, as well
as what recreational activities the class had going on, on a day to day basis. By asking average

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hours a day and collecting demographic data on the survey it was shown that males spend more
time in front of a screen then females.
Qualitative Data
Out of our 15 question survey, 9 of the questions were qualitative. We chose to have more
qualitative data vs quantitative because essentially we had a goal free model. Going into the
evaluation of our research question our group did not have a specific view positively or
negatively toward our topic. The qualitative questions were chosen and written after we
discovered and established the main themes of our focus group. Qualitative data is about
interpreting meanings of words and understanding phenomena within their context. As a group
were trying to interpret main themes and the specific topic within them. After establishing our
themes, we wanted to find patterns within those themes. Collecting demographic information
helped immensely with establishing patterns on the survey with our qualitative data.
Data Level:
For our survey we used nominal, ordinal, and interval data of various levels. We
incorporated these in order to measure our question to the fullest extent possible. In the context
of this project, our demographics obtained represent nominal-level data. We asked our
respondents to write in their own ages, and were able to run mean, median, mode, and calculated
standard deviation. Ordinal-level data can be observed in questions where we asked respondents
to rank a statement. For example, we asked respondents to rate this statement: I feel that my
phone invades my privacy. The options were listed as agree disagree and neutral. In the
analysis process, this became useful ordinal data when designated a code; agree being 1, etc.

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Likert-type questions were analyzed as interval data. These questions, essentially rank
perceptions from highest to lowest or most to least.
Question Organization:
In order to make our survey visually appealing we double-spaced and used generic font,
Times New Roman, which is required for all assignments in the recreation department. We used
this font because each person in the class has all at one point written a paper for the recreation
department and it is common to see Times New Roman. Others things we did to make our survey
visually appealing was to try and keep it as simple as possible and we used front and back when
printing to limit excessive copies and made it physically lighter. Our questions were worded in
specific ways that made it easy for the survey taker to read and answer efficiently and effectively.
Since our topic is viewed negatively, a couple of our survey questions were often contradicting
and we did this purposefully. We wanted the class to view our research topic with an open mind
and to do that we needed to word our questions in different ways in order to receive accurate
data. For example, one statement on a likert scale was others often know where I am because of
my phone, whereas as a similar statement was I feel my phone invades my privacy. The data
for both of these answers should have been the same but the answers ended up contradicting
themselves in the end which gave us virtually un-reliable data.
Primary Purpose:
The survey itself was simple to handout because our class was a convenience sample. The
survey was specifically about their thoughts and opinions on our research topic so in order to
receive our final analysis and conclusions on our research topic we needed the class to
participate. After gathering the survey information, we were able to put all the data together and

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answer our research question, How Technology Effects the Behavior and Leisure on 425 RCLS
Students.
Analysis and Findings
Gender
Male
Female
Other
M
N

21
33
1
2
55

38%
60%
2%

As you can see, our overall amount of respondents was 55 individuals, 33 of which reported as
females, 21 of which reported as males, and 1 who selected other. The M indicates mode: in
excel, Female is coded as 2 and thus 2 or Female was the most common response.
Our questions were intended to explore a few themes that we picked up in the focus
group; themes such as privacy, social interaction, and time use were probed. These questions
were interpreted largely as interval level data. Below are two of these questions, with mode,
median, and mean calculated. For the first figure, we have provided the calculated variance and
standard deviation.
Age
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
50

1
4
8
18
8
4
3
4
1
2
1

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58
M
Mean
Median
N
Mode

1
21
21
55

1.818182
2
1

In the figure above, our demographic information can be obtained. We ranked each age by
frequency, taking into account all ages reported and how often each age was reported. 21, our
mode value, was by far the most common age. The median, again, was 21. The average age was
23.9.
I often feel distracted by my phone

In this question, we asked respondents to rank the above statement: I often feel
distracted by my phone. Answers were agree, disagree and neutral, which we coded into
1, 2, and 3 to analyze. The mean answer was 1.8, meaning that most answers fell between
agree and neutral. The mode was 1, or agree and the median was 2, or neutral.
Technology use takes away from recreation
Mean
Median
Mode

3.55556
4
3

The above question was asked in a likert-type format, wherein respondents could choose
answers from 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree). The mean response was 3.5, a relatively
neutral response. The median was 4, or disagree and the mode was 3, or neutral. Continuing
to analyze the results of this question, we have calculated the variance, standard deviation and
distribution (on a bell curve) of the respondents.

Technology and Effects on Recreation and Leisure Behavior 11

Technology use takes away from recreation

0.81761
0.904218

68% of the scores should fall between 2.65 and 4.45.

Conclusions
One of the first conclusions we can draw from the survey was that neutral responses were
very common. This was likely caused by the surveys design itself, but overall we can say that
for the most part, strong feelings were not common. Males tended to agree more frequently with
statements concerning benefits of technology, while females tended to be slightly more neutral.
As previously mentioned, though, results were overwhelmingly neutral. The next conclusion we
can draw based upon the survey results was that respondents felt that technology is generally
more distracting than it is helpful in an educational setting. In questions asked about recreation,
we observed results that are too neutral to draw strong conclusions from. Though not strong, a
conclusion we can draw based on recreation-oriented questions is that technology (such as social
media) can enable recreation to occur, but technology use during recreation takes away from the
experience. A final conclusion we can draw is that technologyspecifically smartphones can
degrade respondents perceived privacy. Attitudes toward this issue were that smartphones tend
to allow others to know their whereabouts and this makes our respondents somewhat
uncomfortable because of this.

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Recommendations
The strongest recommendation that we would make to anyone pursuing similar projects
in the future is to be more specific. A driving concept behind this research project was broad to
specific. Ideally, we were to start with a broad topic and gradually refine it through the focus
group and research process. However, we never reached enough specificity; we simply explored
too many themes to adequately address any of them respectively. This is likely a reason why
conclusions were hard to draw: we didnt have a concise question to prove or disprove. Another
recommendation concerns the focus group: we encountered issues with participants simply
agreeing with one another or changing their opinions based on what others said. A possible
solution to this would be to interview participants individually or in smaller groups to mitigate
the opinions they exerted upon one-another. Another solution is to facilitate a focus group
environment that encourages individual opinions and openness more. Perhaps probing our
respondents individually and being more cautious about inserting biases into our questions could
have led to this. Finally, we recommend that in the future, researchers pursing this topic may
want to examine age more thoroughly. Age likely has an effect on attitudes towards technology,
but we didnt explore this.