Impacts of Digital Technology on Children
Currently, the use of digital technology, particularly the internet, has rapidly dominated the globe. This technology comes in several forms, such as tablets, video game systems, mp3 players, electronic book readers, and smart phones. Children start schools when exposed to varying digital technology levels with a wide range of related skills (Mattoon et al., 2015). According to OECD 2017, Programmer for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 research, an average of ninety-five percent of fifteen-year-old children have access to the internet within OECD member states. Further, the researchers discovered that children spent a minimum of two hours on the internet, which is a forty-minute rise when compared to 2012 research findings. The OECD report indicates that seventy-two percent of OECD member states children access the internet from school using laptops and tablets to learn while ninety-three have access at home (OECD, 2017). From various reports concerning the rampant exposure and the use of technology by children is an issue of concern that should not be ignored. Digital technology impacts children, and there is a need to examine how they are affected by these technologies. Digital technology comes with both positive and negative effects on users. Therefore, it is necessary to measure the positive and negative effects on children to see which side is more influencing.
The Purpose of the Statement
The purpose of this study is to intensely explore the impacts digital technology has on the children both at school and at home. The study will focus on how social media and video games have changed children’s lives who participate in them using tablets, smartphones, and laptops. The research will be conducted in the United States of America, New York City homes, and schools.
The Research Questions
This research was conducted with the aim of addressing the following questions:
The Specific Forms of Data Collection for the Research
For this study, there will be a combination of qualitative and quantitative research, and a convergent parallel mixed method design will be used. Convergent Parallel mixed method design is most familiar with advanced and basic strategies of mixed methods. The approach qualitative and quantitative data is collected, and analysis is done separately, then the results are compared to see if the findings agree or disagree with each other. The design assumption is that both qualitative and quantitative data give different data types, but the results should be the same at the end. This approach is suitable for the study as studying psychological behaviors can be best understood by gathering information from different data forms.
Before collecting data, parents and teachers of respective participants in this research will be informed for consent purposes. In data collection, qualitative research will use interview form to the subjects. The study will be conducted on two categories of people, the children who are in the lower level of primary school and the students in high school and colleges. For the children at the lower level of primary school, the type of interview required is face-to-face with the participant as observation is also done. For students in colleges and high schools, email internet, and telephone methods can be used to save time and cost of the research. For quantitative research, a questionnaire will be designed where questions will be administered to the participants. When collecting for qualitative and quantitative research using convergent parallel mixed method design, the key idea is to collect both forms of data using the parallel or same variables, concepts, or constructs.
The only challenge researchers encounter with convergent mixed method design in data analysis is the way to merge or converge collected data. However, there are several ways to converge the two databases of research. The first way is known as a side-by-side comparison where you can start with qualitative findings and compare them to quantitative results or start with quantitative findings and compare them to the qualitative results. The second way is known as transformation, where you merge two databases by changing qualitative themes or codes into quantitative variables and then combining the two quantitative databases (Creswell, 2014).
For this research’s reliability and validity, a preliminary test should be done since qualitative and quantitative research will be carried out at the same. The validity of research using this design method should be on establishing both qualitative validity like triangulation and quantitative validity like construct for each database. Thus, through the preliminary test, reliability and validity potential threats using a convergent mixed method design will be addressed early for this research’s effectiveness.
