Field Trial of Home Internet Use

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Whose aim is to investigate the integration and impacts of residential Internet use among a sample of some 100 urban families in Pennsylvania and some 200 small-town Minnesota families. The Internet and commercial online services are growing rapidly with a substantial portion of this growth occurring through connections to homes. The telecommunications and computing industries are reorganizing to provide electronic services to households through computer-based telecommunications. Despite these changes, we have little understanding of how people at home---in their roles as family members, students, participants in the labor force, as members of groups and communities, or as citizens---would use the new services available to them. Similarly, we have little understanding of how these services, once they are used, will affect peoples' lives. This research project capitalizes on an ongoing field trial of residential Internet use that has been developed with industrial sponsorship. There are three questions driving the research: What leads to diffusion and domestication of technology in homes? How do electronic groups develop? What impact do electronic groups have on peoples' social support, information, and household influence? The goal of this NSF-funded project is to address these questions by developing new measures, designing experiments and field studies, and analyzing data that is being collected from the field trial, focusing on intra-family interactions, the development of electronic groups, and the impact that Internet use has on relations within and among groups.