Acquiring a New Technology at Home: A Parent-Child Study About Youths’ Influence on Digital Media Adoption in a Family

Abstract

This study examines to what extent children influence their parents’ acquisition of new technologies in a country with diverse levels of technology penetration, such as Chile. It also investigates the factors that play a role in the influence process, including children’s persuasive strategies (argumentative vs. non-argumentative) and parents’ attitudes toward technology (perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness). Using a parent-child survey and dyadic analyses, the results suggest that youths influence their parents’ acquisition of all technologies under study, particularly the Internet. Also, argumentative strategies have a greater influence than non-argumentative strategies. Finally, parents’ perceived usefulness played a more important role than perceived ease of use in the influence process.

Notes

^1. The Pearson r correlations between parents’ responses about the influence on digital media acquisition exerted by all their children and the specific child who answered the survey at school were very strong. They ranged from .75 to .86.

2. Despite the significant correlation between parents’ and children’s responses, the level of disagreement may vary among dyads. To explore this possibility, I calculated the absolute difference between parents’ and children’s responses on their perceived influence on technology adoption. The analyses revealed that about one third of the dyads (percentages ranged from 27.1% to 44.8% with a mean of 34.3%) did not have differences in their responses (the absolute difference was 0). It also showed that at least three fourths of the sample (75%) had at most 2 out of 5 points of difference in their responses. Finally, to test whether there were factors that might explain the disagreements; I conducted multiple regressions with sociodemographic variables as predictors and the magnitude of difference as dependent variable. The regressions showed that neither the total models nor the predictors were significant, suggesting that the absolute differences between parents’ and children’s responses was randomly distributed among groups.

3. The score 0 was recoded as missing value.

4. Pearson r correlations run from .09, p ≤ .10 (ask for it directly) to .33, p. p ≤ .001 (offer deals).

5. On the first factor “Beg for it” loaded .65; “Say everyone else has it” .65; “Ask for it directly” .45; “Demand it” .44. On the second factor, “offer deals” loaded .79 and “give reasons” .51.

6. Because the item “ask for it directly” lowered the Cronbach’s alpha to .62, it was excluded from the non-argumentative strategies scale. Despite eliminating the item, the reliability coefficient is still lower than the usual standard for attitudinal scales of .70, which suggests a somewhat reduced internal consistency. However, the scale showed adequate levels of construct-validity with a Principal Axis Factor Analysis. Finally, although this slightly decreased internal consistency may affect measurement accuracy, the relationship between these scales and other variables behaved in the expected direction, showing adequate criterion-related validity (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2010).

7. Because the distribution of the variable perceived usefulness was negatively skewed, those who scored 2 standard deviations from the mean (scores below 2.67) were recoded as having a score of 2.67. They represented 2.5% of the sample (6 cases). As a result, the perceived usefulness index runs from 2.67 to 5.

8. To reduce the number of missing cases and increase the power of the statistical analyses, in the parents’ survey, 10 cases where the age was missing it was replaced by the mean age of 44. In the students’ sample, five missing ages were replaced by the mean age of 15. In both samples, the median ages were also 44 and 15, respectively.

9. Thirty-three cases where income was missing and eight cases where education was missing were recoded and missing values were replaced by the median and mean, respectively. In both cases this value was 6.0.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences.

Notes on contributors

Teresa Correa

Teresa Correa (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is assistant professor in the School of Communication at Diego Portales University, Chile. Her research focuses on access and use of ICTs.