Publication Date
2023
Document Type
Dissertation/Thesis
First Advisor
Pillow, Bradford H.
Degree Name
M.A. (Master of Arts)
Legacy Department
Department of Psychology
Abstract
This study explored whether young adolescents and their parents have similar attitudes about appropriate mobile phone use, and whether those attitudes vary depending upon adolescent or parent phone user, the mobile phone use context (i.e., family dinner table, party, or homework/ work), and their self-perspective or other’s perspective. Fifty-two adolescents in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade (age range 11 years to 14 years and 5 months; 26 males, 23 females, 3 non-binaries) and their parent or guardian participated. Adolescents identified as white/European American (82.7%), multiple races (5.8%), Asian (5.8%), black/African American (1.9%), and Hispanic/Latinx/Spanish (1.9%), or did not respond (1.9%). Adolescents and parents were asked to complete an online survey with mobile phone use vignettes and rate their attitude or the perspective of the other’s attitude about each vignette (1 = Strongly Disagree to 7 = Strongly Agree). The correlation between young adolescent participants’ self-perspective ratings and adult participants’ self-perspective ratings of adolescent phone users for the context of dinner was statistically significant and positive (r = .238). The correlations between young adolescent participants’ self-perspective ratings and adult participants’ other-perspective ratings of phone use (i.e., what young adolescents think) were statistically significant for the vignettes of adolescent phone use at dinner (r = .415) and parental phone use at dinner (r = .338). The correlations between young adolescent participants’ other-perspective ratings and adult participants’ self-perspective ratings (i.e., what adults think) were not statistically significant for both adolescent and parent phone users for each context. A significant main effect of participant group was found with adult participants (M = 4.35) giving higher appropriateness ratings than young adolescent participants (M = 3.54) for the vignettes. There was a significant main effect of vignette phone user with parent phone users (M = 4.20) rated higher in appropriateness than vignettes with adolescent phone users (M = 3.68). A significant main effect of context was found with homework/work rated the most appropriate context (M = 4.61) followed by the context of party (M = 3.93), and dinner rated the least appropriate context (M = 3.28). Additionally, there was a significant four-way interaction among participant group, phone user, context, and perspective. A partial moderation effect was found for adolescent duration of mobile phone ownership on the relationship between ratings of appropriate mobile phone use and the variables of participant group, phone user, context, and perspective for both participant groups and the adult group, but not the young adolescent group. The findings suggest that both young adolescents and parents cannot consistently and accurately take the other’s perspective when rating appropriate phone use; phone use appropriateness ratings depend on the age of the rater, phone user, context, and perspective; and additional factors not considered in this study likely influence both young adolescents’ and parents’ phone use appropriateness ratings.
Recommended Citation
Cleary, Stephanie Jean, "Young Adolescents’ and Parents’ Attitudes and Perspective Taking About Appropriate Mobile Phone Use" (2023). Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations. 7818.
https://huskiecommons.lib.niu.edu/allgraduate-thesesdissertations/7818
Extent
130 pages
Language
en
Publisher
Northern Illinois University
Rights Statement
In Copyright
Rights Statement 2
NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.
Media Type
Text
