Survey - Research into Jealousy and Surveillance on Facebook.

**Survey-RMIT-Psych** · 12-07-21, 01:29 AM

Tertiary institution and department:
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University, School of Health & Biomedical Sciences.

Project researchers:

Chief Investigator: Associate Professor Sophia Xenos (Senior Lecturer (Psychology) School of Health & Biomedical Sciences, RMIT University) sophia.xenos@rmit.edu.au
Associate Investigator: Dr Melissa Monfries (Senior Lecturer (Clinical Psychology) School of Health & Biomedical Sciences, RMIT University) melissa.monfries@rmit.edu.au
Student Researcher*: Miss Jorja Fraser (Honours student (Psychology) School of Health & Biomedical Sciences, RMIT University) Jorja.fraser@student.rmit.edu.au

*This research project is part of a thesis for the student researcher, as part of an Honours degree in psychology that the student is completing.

Purpose of the survey:
In recent years, researchers have begun to investigate the impacts of Facebook use on romantic relationships. In particular, jealousy and interpersonal electronic surveillance have been found to increase with Facebook use. Research has suggested that age and relationship length may moderate this relationship. This survey aims to contribute to this growing research area by investigating the relationship between Facebook use and both Facebook Jealousy and interpersonal electronic surveillance, as well as the moderating effect of age and relationship length. (Note: You do not need to currently be in a romantic relationship to participate in this study).

Confidentiality & Security:
All data collected in this survey will be anonymous and non-identifiable. All data will be securely stored on password-protected servers at RMIT University for at least 5 years, accessible only by researchers. There is a possibility that this research will be published, in which case anonymous data may be stored indefinitely in a data repository.
This research project has been approved by the RMIT Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC).

Intended use of findings:
The findings of this research project will be included in a report as part of the student researcher’s Honours degree in psychology at RMIT University. This report may be published, in which instance all data will remain anonymous and non-identifiable.

Link to the survey:

This survey will take approx. 10 minutes to complete.

– thank you so much to anyone that participates!

**hinekadon** · 12-07-21, 07:45 AM

has anyone checked out if this is a scam/or not ? Kinda looks real doesnt it ?
Im asking because of the date and time it was posted ???

**mtv** · 12-07-21, 10:16 AM

Originally Posted by hinekadon

has anyone checked out if this is a scam/or not ? Kinda looks real doesnt it ?
Im asking because of the date and time it was posted ???

It's legit and approved.

The OP sought permission from admin before posting anything.

**wotnot** · 12-07-21, 10:17 AM

Seems legit....for mine, asking the wrong question though....I wouldn't go near/have a facebook account ever =)

**mtv** · 12-07-21, 10:22 AM

Originally Posted by wotnot

........I wouldn't go near/have a facebook account ever =)

And that's exactly what the OP was told

... that many of us on Austech do not use facebook and it's up to members if they wish to participate in the survey or not.

**admin** · 12-07-21, 11:47 AM

As MTV stated, I approved it.

Each year, thousands of Australian students are required to do this sort of stuff to do a thesis and get a degree. I personally am happy to assist them where possible as long as it doesn't annoy too many members, which one thread wont do.
The OP has been told most people here are not social media users, but was still happy to go ahead. To help her, I will put a link on the main page for 7 days.
And please remember if you are a facebook user, it wont kill you to do something nice for a fellow Australian. University is an opportunity in life I didn't get, helping someone to achieve it by allowing them a post is a small contribution on our behalf as far as I am concerned.

**enf** · 12-07-21, 11:58 AM

Originally Posted by wotnot

Seems legit....for mine, asking the wrong question though....I wouldn't go near/have a facebook account ever =)

+1

**hinekadon** · 12-07-21, 01:42 PM

Hahaha Answered the first question ? Are you over 60 ? yes ,that was the end bye

**Survey-RMIT-Psych** · 12-07-21, 02:02 PM

Thank you for participating regardless! Seems you bumped up against one of the criteria questions - I should have thought to do this in the original post, so I'll list what the criteria are here:

Be aged 18-60
Be an Australian resident
Be fluent in English
Be in or have ever been in a relationship
Have a Facebook account

Thank you again for attempting to participate, the thought counts more than you know

**hinekadon** · 12-07-21, 07:34 PM

I have to question the 60 cut off??? .After two marriages my current girlfriend and I have a very active sex lives and she is always worried what people say on faceache . She is ( 72)just quietly and I am 73 and have been a oz citizen

**Survey-RMIT-Psych** · 12-07-21, 07:58 PM

Originally Posted by hinekadon

I have to question the 60 cut off??? .After two marriages my current girlfriend and I have a very active sex lives and she is always worried what people say on faceache . She is ( 72)just quietly and I am 73 and have been a oz citizen

That is a really valid issue that you raise, and I agree with you about it. Unfortunately, as I'm not in this project by myself and have two supervisors with more experience and more of a final say in the matter, the need for a cut-off was a decision made by them, and the cut-off was determined by statistics of Facebook users as reported by Facebook in the past year, where even though there are users below 18 and over 60 (like you and your gf), the majority fall somewhere in the middle - so they took that middle and added a little on each end.

It might make you feel better (or not!) to know that this age range is significantly larger than most included in existing Facebook research. It seems things are starting to change and people are beginning to realise that people of all ages use social media.

I appreciate your feedback! I have added it to my notes and will include it in my final report as a limitation.

**lsemmens** · 13-07-21, 05:07 PM

I'm another geriatric who does not qualify, though I do use faceache to keep track of my many friends and family all over the country. I would have happily contributed to your survey. Stupid question, how are you going to validate the responses? I can imagine that there are those who would "respond" in many and varied ways to skew your results. Is there any method to determine that a person responding is actually part of your target group? You get the idea.

**Survey-RMIT-Psych** · 13-07-21, 05:55 PM

Originally Posted by lsemmens

I'm another geriatric who does not qualify, though I do use faceache to keep track of my many friends and family all over the country. I would have happily contributed to your survey. Stupid question, how are you going to validate the responses? I can imagine that there are those who would "respond" in many and varied ways to skew your results. Is there any method to determine that a person responding is actually part of your target group? You get the idea.

I'm sorry you couldn't contribute, but I do sincerely appreciate the thought and intention

Also, not a stupid question at all! So as you say, there's really no way to ensure that everyone who completes the survey is doing so honestly, and especially with an anonymous online survey like this there is no way to validate that participants are who they say they are. It's just a sort of faith-based practice, where I need to trust that at least majority who respond are who they claim to be - and I think that for the most part, reason would suggest that is the case.

[I go on a bit of a tangent below, so fair disclaimer that the above is mostly the answer to your question!]

In terms of validating whether people respond to questions in a way that represents how they actually feel or think, well that's another tricky thing. I can't know that when someone says "strongly agree" if they really strongly agree, or if they just think they should, or maybe the way they've interpreted the phrasing of the question has caused them to strongly agree, when they might not actually agree with what the question is intended to measure. It's all part of 'response bias', and it's common in surveys. However, there are some things to control for this/reduce this risk. E.g., in my survey, the questionnaires I've used have been extensively tested and validated by thousands of researchers for a decade before me, on hundreds of thousands of people, and altogether have shown super consistent results - demonstrating that for the significant majority, these questionnaires do measure what they are meant to measure - i.e., the questions for example are clearly-worded to avoid ambiguity, there aren't so many questions that people are likely to start randomly clicking after a certain point, and so on. All these little things add up to act as a sort of safeguard against really inconsistent messy answers. Further, if someone is answering truly sporadically with no regard for the questions, this will be evident when I analyse the results, because the questionnaires have some slightly differently worded questions that measure the same thing - and if someone says Yes to A and then a few questions later says No to A, and then repeats this a good few times, it'll be apparent their responses aren't reliable, and that data set could be removed (but this should only be done in rare extreme cases).

In terms of having generally skewed results, where the skew is a result of a real true difference among participants - then that's perfectly fine! I've had a few people on a different website say they meet the criteria but stopped halfway through cause they were worried about skewing my data. Tragic! If most participants fall in Camp A, but then a bunch of other participants fall way over in Camp E, that's not a problem, that's interesting! It's a sign that there's something significantly different about those groups. Maybe it's their age, maybe it's their gender, maybe it's their culture, and so on. Whatever the reason, it's interesting, and it's why we do science! To explore and see what's really going on. Some researchers don't want variation in their results, because they just want to prove right their own theory, and so they'll do whatever sneaky tricks they can to ensure they end up with results that support their theory. I'm not invested in my theory, it's a requirement and something I decided based on research, but if it's proved wrong then that is just more interesting and equally as welcome.

That was certainly way more information then you requested, I just enjoy talking about this stuff

**hinekadon** · 13-07-21, 06:08 PM

now you have pricked my curiosity . Why did you choose austech . generally we are a bunch of almost misfits and we are of a wide variety of political views and some strong ideas as to whats acceptable or not . the variance doesn't stop at a specific range of trade field , but generally we try to help each other in all walks of life ?

**Survey-RMIT-Psych** · 13-07-21, 07:09 PM

Originally Posted by hinekadon

now you have pricked my curiosity . Why did you choose austech . generally we are a bunch of almost misfits and we are of a wide variety of political views and some strong ideas as to whats acceptable or not . the variance doesn't stop at a specific range of trade field , but generally we try to help each other in all walks of life ?

That's a fair question - Essentially, I know that a lot of people aren't inclined to take 10 minutes and complete a survey when there's no compensation for them. Because of that, and because I have a target of 342 responses, and because I want those 342 to come from a more diverse range than is the standard in this kind of research (i.e., predominantly female, straight, students, 18-25), I'm trying to cast a very big net in a lot of Australian forums that achieves both diversity and numbers. To my surprise I've had a hard time finding many active Australian forums, and even less who are kind enough to allow me to share my survey - hence my gratitude to the admin here for letting me do so despite it being out of the norm.

**wotnot** · 13-07-21, 07:41 PM

To my surprise I've had a hard time finding many active Australian forums, and even less who are kind enough to allow me to share my survey

That's primarily because since the advent of FB (and special interest groups therein), many forums have died off as members moved to FB instead. In likewise vein, many admins of forums who have 'suffered' a loss of activity (or active members), are extremely resistant to -any- FB content appearing on said forums...just some FYI from a moderator of a couple of forums that have veritably 'died' since FB came along =)

**Survey-RMIT-Psych** · 13-07-21, 10:13 PM

Originally Posted by wotnot

That's primarily because since the advent of FB (and special interest groups therein), many forums have died off as members moved to FB instead. In likewise vein, many admins of forums who have 'suffered' a loss of activity (or active members), are extremely resistant to -any- FB content appearing on said forums...just some FYI from a moderator of a couple of forums that have veritably 'died' since FB came along =)

Wow... I see what you mean! That's a real shame.

**wotnot** · 13-07-21, 10:28 PM

Originally Posted by Survey-RMIT-Psych

Wow... I see what you mean! That's a real shame.

Cause and effect actually ~ if one compares those numbers/dates against when 'smartphones' truly became popular in AU, it all tallies nicely.

What is a shame, on that particular forum at least, members used to buy/sell/trade items on the forum without any concern of being misled/ripped-off -- FB by comparison is a nightmare in that regard, but that's fairly common knowledge ; scammers never lasted very long on a forum -- FB is full of them ad_infinitum.

**mtv** · 13-07-21, 11:20 PM

As mentioned, many members on Austech are anti-Facebook.

We have seen lives destroyed by what people post, whether those posts are factual or not.

Often those who make such posts regret doing so, but all too late.

**lsemmens** · 13-07-21, 11:46 PM

I would hope that the survey addresses some of the issues raised here re- anti - facebook sentiment. I wish you well in your endeavours Survey Guy. When You have competed the survey I would be interested in a precis of the conclusions reached compared with the expected result.