In Do women and extroverts perceive interactivity differently than men and introverts? Role of individual differences in response to GCI vs. CMC interactivity, Yan Huang, Shyam Sundar, Zhiyao Ye and Arial Celeste Johnson show that extraversion and gender play a role in how users perceive interactivity.
Huang, Sundar, Ye and Johnson conducted a study with four conditions (Interactivity with HCI tools vs. CMC tools vs. HCI + CMC tools vs. control) to study how introverts, extraverts, men and women responded to different interactivity levels on websites. The content of the websites were all the same except for the manipulation of interactivity. This study revealed that extroverted males perceive more interactivity in HCI tools while extroverted females perceive more interactivity in CMC tools. “While extraversion positively predicts website attitudes for both interactivity types individually, it negatively predicts website attitudes when the website affords both together,” Huang, Sundar, Ye and Johnson wrote. The study also found that the appeal of interactivity with CMC tools is higher among females than males and that extroverts evaluated the website more positively if it afforded message interactivity.
I find the results of this study compelling, but I think it’s important to note that the study had a total of 99 participants, all of whom were between the ages of 18 and 28. While gender distribution in each of the four conditioned groups was relatively even, I think the fact that all participants are around the same age could limit the generalizability of the findings. Additionally, as Huang, Sundar, Ye and Johnson write in their piece, “the perception of interactivity during actual web browsing is an integrated experience that can be affected by a variety of factors.” Since the experiment was done in a lab with a student sample, the results could differ in real world web browsing scenarios.
Your point about the limitations of the study is valid, especially given that the age range of the participants consists of the people who are probably more comfortable and familiar with online interactions than those outside this age range. It makes me wonder if the results of the study are repeatable. Although this limitation does exist, I am curious about what the results would be if the experimenters split by age instead of gender (ex are there differences in participants on the younger age of the range compared to the older participants).
I read this article as well and asked the same question. I feel that overall, although I think the study is interesting, the data collected may not be as accurate as I first thought. It seems to only focus its findings on college-aged individuals. Therefore, I don’t believe the study is representative of the initial population they were studying. I agree with the previous comment– it would be very interesting to see how interactivity preferences change with age. There should definitely be a follow-up to this research with a better sample and perhaps a separate study focused on age.
I also read this article and after reading your response, I agree that perhaps its not very representative and therefore applicable to an entire population. I do however think the researchers who wrote this paper did a pretty good job of acknowledging this fault. In addition, because technology is so age dependent in the ways in which it is used and interacted with, I think the study really could have benefited from using a wider range of ages.