A multilevel longitudinal study of experiencing virtual presence in adolescence: the role of anxiety and openness to experience in the classroom

ABSTRACT

Presence describes the feeling of reality and immersion that users of virtual/Internet environments have. Importantly, it has been suggested that there are individual and contextual differences regarding susceptibility to presence. These aspects of presence have been linked to both beneficial and disadvantageous uses of the Internet, such as online therapeutic applications and addictive Internet behaviours. In the present study, presence was studied in relation to individual anxiety symptoms and classroom-level openness to experience (OTE) using a normative sample of 648 adolescents aged between 16 and 18 years. Presence was assessed with the Presence II questionnaire, anxiety symptoms with the relevant subscales of the SCL-90-R, and OTE with the Five-Factor Questionnaire. A three-level hierarchical linear model was calculated. Results showed that experiencing presence in virtual environments dropped between the ages of 16 and 18 years. Additionally, although anxiety symptoms were associated with higher presence at 16 years, this association decreased with age. Results also demonstrated that adolescents in classrooms higher on OTE reported reduced level of experiencing presence. The practical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Presence
• adolescence
• development
• anxiety
• classroom
• openness to experience

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Vasileios Stavropoulos http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3851-4624

Notes

1. The present data have been used in three more published studies that address different theoretical questions (Stavropoulos, Gentile, and Motti-Stefanidi 2015; Stavropoulos et al., ‘A Longitudinal Study’ 2015; Stavropoulos et al., ‘MMORPG Gaming’ 2015). Instruments used in the data include the (i) Internet Addiction Test (IAT; Young 1998a ); (ii) Presence II questionnaire (Witmer and Singer 1998); (iii) Online Flow Questionnaire (Chen, Wigand, and Nilan 1999); (iv) Symptom Check List 90 (Derogatis and Savitz 1999 ); (v) Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg 1965); (vi) Five-Factor Questionnaire for Children (Fünf-Faktoren-Fragebogen für Kinder) (Asendorpf and Van Aken 2003); (vii) Generalized Self-Efficacy Scale (Schwarzer 1993); (viii) Family Adherence and Cohesion Evaluation Scale (Olson 2000); (ix) Sociometric Questionnaire (Coie, Dodge, and Coppotelli, 1982); (x) Greek version of the Experience of Close Relationships Revised (Tsagarakis, Kafetsios, and Stalikas 2007); (xi) demographic and Internet use questions; and (xii) school grades of the participants retrieved from their school records.

2. The data abide with the sample size requirements suggesting a) a minimum ratio of 10_clusters/5_participants to test for fixed effects and cross-level interactions in models with one explanatory variable at each of the levels, and b) a minimum requirement of 30 clusters for testing standard errors of fixed effects (Maas and Hox 2004, 2005).

3. The Presence II questionnaire focused on summative evaluation of a specific experience in previous studies (Witmer and Singer 1998). In the present study, students were asked to address the Presence II items, having in mind the most characteristic (average) use/experience of their most preferred Internet application within the period of the last six months.

4. To address the issue of common method variance, the method of using a single common latent factor (CLF) was used with all of the measures involved in the model as indicators. Their parameters/regression weights were constrained to be the same (Podsakoff et al. 2003). The square of the regression weight of the latent factor (.24 in the current model) in the observed variables indicates the amount of variance accountable to common method variance, which with the present variables was 6% (.057). The analysis was then repeated without the CLF (Meade, Watson, and Kroustalis 2007). The standardised regression coefficients weights (SRCW) with and without the CLF were compared (SRCW_{without CLF} − SRCW_{with CLF}). The differences were lower than .20, indicating that the effect of common method bias was insignificant.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Union and Greek National Funds under the National Strategic Reference Framework 2010–2012.