Field Trial of Home Internet Use

其目的是调查100个宾夕法尼亚州城市家庭和200个明尼苏达州小城镇家庭的住宅互联网使用的整合和影响。互联网和商业在线服务正在迅速增长，其中很大一部分增长是通过与家庭的连接实现的。电讯及电脑业正在重组，透过以电脑为基础的电讯，向住户提供电子服务。尽管有这些变化，但我们对人们在家里——作为家庭成员、学生、劳动力参与者、团体和社区成员或公民——将如何使用他们可以获得的新服务知之甚少。同样，我们也不太了解这些服务一旦被使用，将如何影响人们的生活。该研究项目利用了一项正在进行的住宅互联网使用现场试验，该试验是在工业赞助下开发的。推动这项研究的有三个问题：是什么导致了技术在家庭中的传播和驯化？电子团体是如何发展的？电子群体对人们的社会支持、信息和家庭影响有什么影响？这个由美国国家科学基金会资助的项目的目标是通过制定新的措施、设计实验和实地研究、分析从实地试验中收集的数据、关注家庭内部的互动、电子群体的发展以及互联网使用对群体内部和群体之间关系的影响来解决这些问题。

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.