Getting Real A Naturalistic Methodology for Using Smartphones to Collect Mediated Communications.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Advances in Human-Computer Interaction Volume 2012, Article ID 815972, 10 pages doi:10.1155/2012/815972 Research Article Getting Real: A Naturalistic Methodology for Using Smartphones to Collect Mediated Communications Chad C. Tossell,1 Philip Kortum,1 Clayton W. Shepard,2 Ahmad Rahmati,2 and Lin Zhong2 1 Department of Psychology, Rice University, 6100 Main Street, MS-25, Houston, TX 77005, USA 2 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, 6100 Main Street, MS-25, Houston, TX 77005, USA Correspondence should be addressed to Chad C. Tossell, chad.tossell@ Received 2 December 2011; Revised 16 March 2012; Accepted 9 April 2012 Academic Editor: Eva Cerezo Copyright © 2012 Chad C. Tossell et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This paper contributes an intentionally naturalistic methodology using smartphone logging technology to study communications in the wild. Smartphone logging can provide tremendous access to communications data from real environments. However, researchers must consider how it is employed to preserve naturalistic behaviors. Nine considerations are presented to this end. We also provide a description of a naturalistic logging approach that has been applied successfully to collecting mediated communications from iPhones. The methodology was designed to intentionally decrease reactivity and resulted in data that were more accurate than self-reports. Example analyses are also provided to show how data collected can be analyzed to establish empirical patterns and identify user differe