I have conducted one study into the multitasking phenomenon. It was presented at a national conference and not submitted for publication but I'd be happy to pass the paper along. I observed undergraduates at their own computers while they completed a writing task for a core english course. I used screen capture software to monitor what applications they used and how often they switched between them (IM, email, Word, browsers) and then used post interviews to categorize why they switched when they did. The findings illustrated that students most often switched to a form of personal communication (IM or email) to either 1) blow off steam or 2) ask a fellow student a question. Browsers were used to look up assignments and reference information. Not surprising at all. It was a very small informant group (9 students) but the methodology worked well and I hope to repeat it with a larger population at some point. Sarah Robbins On 10/14/06, Barry Wellman <wellman@chass.utoronto.ca> wrote:
As this is the Association of Internet RESEARCHERS, I wonder if anyone has done any Research on multitasking -- to address the interesting conjectures that a bunch of people have.
Alas, the only study I know of is our own (actually mostly Anabel's) observations, interviews and surveys of a high-tech orgnization:
Anabel Quan-Haase and Barry Wellman. "Hyperconnected Net Work: Computer-Mediated Community in a High-Tech Organization." Pp. 281-333 in The Firm as a Collaborative Community: Reconstructing Trust in the Knowledge Economy, edited by Charles Heckscher and Paul Adler. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Anabel Quan-Haase and Barry Wellman, "From the Computerization Movement to Computerization: A Case Study of a Community of Practice." Forthcoming in Computerization Movements and Technology Diffusion: From Mainframes to Ubiquitous Computing, edited by Ken Kraemer and Margaret Elliott. Medford, NJ: Information Today, 2007.
Barry Wellman _____________________________________________________________________
Barry Wellman S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology NetLab Director Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman for fun: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _____________________________________________________________________
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