3.4 Adoption and Use of Mobile Phones by University Students and Academic Staff 55
3.4.1.1 Adoption of Mobile Phones Amongst University Students in the USA
EDUCAUSE Center for Analysis and Research (ECAR) has been running a yearly survey of higher learning institutions in the USA since 2004 with the aim of tracking undergraduate students’ ownership and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).
Besides laptop computers, personal computers (PCs) and other mobile devices such as tablet computers (Ipads), the study has also meticulously tracked the ownership of mobile phones, particularly smartphones, over the years (Dahlstrom and Bichsel, 2014). The ECAR studies have grown in scope over the years from 12 participating institutions in 2004 to 213 in 2014.
The coverage has grown too, from 4,123 students when it first started in 2004, to 75,306 in
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2014. Although the number of participating institutions and students slightly droped to 161 and 50,274 respectively in 2015 (Dahlstrom et al., 2015), ECAR studies still remain the most authoritative and widely quoted studies for scholars, not only in the field of ICT, but other disciplines as well. It is for this reason that the discussion of mobile phone penetration in the USA centered much on the findings of these studies, although other relevant studies were reviewed.
As already indicated, ECAR studies stopped asking about student ownership of cell phones in 2008 based on the understanding that they are pervasive (Lippincott, 2010). The last time this was done in 2007, the mobile phone penetration amongst undergraduate students was 86.1%
(85.3% for males and 86.6% for females) (Caruso and Salaway, 2007). This presents a challenge in determining the penetration rate of mobile phones amongst the student population in USA higher education institutions considering that the other available studies do not have the same coverage as that of ECAR studies.
One of the few available case studies on mobile phone ownership amongst students was conducted by Becker et al. (2013) at Hunter College in New York, that involved 613 students. The challenge with this study, however, was that it made use of an open survey method implying that anybody could participate thus calling into question the representativeness of the sample. Nevertheless, the findings of this study indicated that 98.7%
of the students owned mobile phones. These results were similar to those obtained in an ITU (2014) report which revealed that the mobile phone penetration in the USA had reached 98.41%. However, the ITU usually collect statistics based on mobile phone subscriptions in a particular country, hence these do not accurately reflect the actual number of subscribers because such figures also incorporate multiple subscribers (Balakrishnan and Raj, 2012). This is why in some other countries such as South Africa (149.68%), Morocco (131.71%) and Chile (133.26%) the number of subscribers exceed the population. A properly conducted survey of actual phone owners is the best way of sorting out this issue. Another study aimed at determining mobile phone ownership was conducted by Booth (2009) at Ohio University.
This email-based survey attracted 5,299 responses. This study mainly involved undergraduate students (81%). It is, therefore, not surprising that the majority of the respondents (66%) were 22 years old or younger. The other participants to this study were as follows: 12% were aged between 23 and 27 years, 5% belonged to the 27 to 30 year category, and the remaining 6%
represented those aged 31 years and older. This study found that 94% of the respondents
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owned a cell phone. The mobile phone ownership in this study was understandably lower than that reported in a study conducted by Becker et al. (2013) at Hunter College in New York (98.7%) as it was done much earlier, but was higher than that recorded in the ECAR 2007 study (86.1%). Again the variation in the time frame could explain the differences in these studies. The shortcoming of this study is that the questionnaires were distributed
“primarily by an all-student email message, generating a non-random sample that likely represents a section of the Ohio University student body modestly skewed towards greater technology competency” (Booth, 2009, p. 42). Booth further notes that the statistical validity and reliability of the survey results cannot be considered explicitly “scientific” because its respondent base was self-selected.
Literature on smartphone penetration is more readily available than that of feature phones for reasons already discussed. A smartphone, according to Litchfield (2010), is a phone that runs an open operating system, and is permanently connected to the Internet. A smartphone uses either WiFi or telecommunication service providers’ networks to access the Internet (Song and Lee, 2012). Lippincott (2010) adds that besides Internet capability, a smartphone embraces functionalities that are similar to those of a computer. Smartphones, therefore, have a QWERTY keyboard, either physically or virtually, for typing. They also have most of the basic functions of the feature phone that includes the call function, SMS text messaging, and camera (Yu, 2012).
Information gathered from a number of sources (Salisbury et al., 2015; Dahlstrom et al., 2015; Dahlstrom and Bichsel, 2014; Becker et al., 2013; Kobus et al., 2013; Song and Lee, 2012) show that the number of smartphones has grown tremendously amongst undergraduate students in the USA over the past ten years. The ECAR (2004) study, for instance, found that only 1.1% of American undergraduate students owned a smartphone in 2004. Recent ECAR studies (Dahlstrom et al., 2015; Dahlstrom and Bichsel, 2014) show that smartphone ownership has grown exponentially over the past three years; shooting up from 76% in 2013 to 86% in 2014 before leapfrogging further to 92% in 2015. Results from the ECAR (2014) study indicate that smartphone ownership was 3% higher than it was predicted to grow that year. This signifies that the penetration of smartphones was growing at a very fast pace. The study further notes that smartphone ownership for undergraduates did not vary much by student demographics or institution type, but those who ranked high on ECAR’s tech- inclination classification were more likely to own smartphones.
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Another notable finding from recent ECAR studies is that multiple ownership of mobile devices is becoming commonplace amongst undergraduate students. For instance, the ECAR (2014) study indicate that among the 99% of students who owned a smartphone, 8% owned just one device, 92% owned at least two devices whilst 59% owned three or more devices.
The ECAR (2015) show that the number of students who owned only a smartphone had droped to 3% whilst the rest owned two or more devices. Some of the most notable devices which students owned besides smartphones were tablet PCs (Apple Ipad and Samsang Galaxy Tab) whose penetration rate increased from 47% in 2014 to 56% in 2015 and E- readers whose penetration rate was approximately 24% in 2014.
The Pearson Student Mobile Device Survey is another yearly nationwide study that gives a picture of mobile device ownership amongst USA undergraduate students. Findings of the 2015 study show that 85% of the students owned smartphones (Poll, 2015). This figure represents a mere 1% increase from that recorded in 2014. Despite the increase, the growth of smartphone ownwership amongst undergraduate students was now showing signs of easing considering that 2014 recorded a 12% jump in growth from 72% in 2013. Comparatively, these results do not differ much with those obtained in the ECAR (2015) study which had put smartphone ownership at 92% (Dahlstrom et al., 2015). Similarly, the Pearson study showed tablet PC ownership to be on the upward spiral, rising from 38% in 2013 to 45 % in 2014 before hitting the 52% mark in 2015 (Poll, 2015). However, the tablet computer ownership was almost 4% lower when compared with that obtained in the ECAR (2015) study.
Although the Pearson study had a similar geographical coverage to the ECAR studies, it used an online survey methodology which is less reliable when compared to the ECAR studies that use random stratified sampling methods. The sample (1,211) was equally on the lower side when compared to that drawn in an ECAR (2015) study (50,274). Whereas the ECAR study indicates that it had an approximate 1% margin of error, the Pearson study omits this information. In spite of these shortfalls, the results do not seem to differ much.
Besides these nationwide studies, there are also some other case studies that have been conducted to gauge smartphone ownership among students in USA universities or colleges.
One of such studies was conducted by Song and Lee (2012) to determine mobile device ownership among international business students of the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign (UIUC). This web-based survey that yielded 101 valid responses revealed that
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82.2% of the respondents owned a smartphone whilst 24.8% owned a tablet PC. Four issues are worthy noting in this study. Firstly, the findings reflect the trend in previous studies (Booth, 2014; Dahlstrom and Bichsel, 2014) whereby smartphones had a higher penetration rate compared to tablet PCs. Secondly, the study shows that students were moving towards multiple ownership of mobile devices to take advantage of the unique capabilities of each device. Whilst this study indicats that 21% of the respondents owned both a smartphone and a tablet PC, it also reveals that over 61% of non-smartphone owners were considering purchasing a smartphone within the next six months, while 53% of non-tablet PC owners were likely to purchase a tablet PC. This signifies that the number of people owning multiple devices was bound to increase. Thirdly, when these findings are compared with findings of the ECAR (2012), which is the same year when this study was conducted, one notices that both smartphone and tablet PC ownership among international business students of the University of Illinois (82.2% for smartphones and 24.8% for tablet PC) was much higher than that of American students (62% for smartphones and 15% for tablet PC). Looking at the larger picture, one would notice that Americans have generally lagged behind people from other countries in accepting the mobile phone. For instance in 2012, the mobile phone penetration in America was at 96.01 %. On the contrary, other countries such as Austria (160.54%), Finland (172.32%) and Hong Kong, China (229.24%) had penetration rates that were almost double the figure recorded in the USA (ITU, 2014). Fourthly, the study had, furthermore, reinforced the dominance of Apple brands in the American market which accounted for a third of total smartphone ownership and closely followed by Android devices. The ECAR (2012) study, however, indicates that 44% of the respondents owned an iPhone whilst 46% owned android devices. Apple dominance in the smartphone and tablet market had widened further in 2014 as 58% of the undergraduate students indicated that they owned an iPad while 54% of the smartphone owners indicated that they owned an iPhone and only 43% of the respondents indicated that they owned an Android phone (Dahlstrom and Bichsel, 2014).
3.4.1.2 Adoption of Mobile Phones Amongst University Students in the Developed and