Browsing by Subject "Smartphone"

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Stress management and coping using smartphones by mothers of young children
(2021) Wolfers, Lara N.; Utz, Sonja
Being a parent of young children is associated with both joy and stress. High parental stress was shown to be associated with decreased parental wellbeing and negative child outcomes. Thus, it is important that parents successfully cope with stress. Research has shown that becoming a parent often results in constraints on time allocation and a perceived state of isolation, making it harder to cope with stress. Smartphones might be a useful tool for parental stress management. For most parents, smartphones are always and easily accessible. Moreover, smartphones can provide many resources such as social support and information and can be used for short periods. Accordingly, first studies show that parents often use their smartphones to cope with stress. However, parental smartphone use has been widely problematized in academic and public discussions because smartphones are said to distract parents from interacting with their children. Research on how parents use smartphones to their benefit is still limited. Moreover, we do not know yet whether and under what circumstances coping using smartphones effectively reduces parental stress. To fill this knowledge gap, I examined in my dissertation how mothers of young children use their smartphones for coping with stress and under what circumstances coping using smartphones is effective. As mothers are still the primary caregivers, my dissertation mainly focuses on mothers. In a first theoretical step, I conducted a systematic scoping review summarizing and integrating the previous literature on media use for coping. Many studies assessed how media are used for coping. However, the literature had not clearly identified where media have their place in stress management models. In the scoping review, I suggested placing media in the transactional model of stress and coping by differentiating between coping strategies, such as social support or distraction and coping tools, such as talking to a friend or using a smartphone. When confronted with a stressful encounter, individuals choose a combination of coping tools and coping strategies to cope with stress. The fit of this combination with the situational circumstances determines whether the coping efforts are successful. Based on this conceptualization, I conducted a qualitative focus groups study and a quantitative experience sampling study (ESS). In the focus group study, building on a synthesis of the literature on digital media use for parenting and smartphone use while parenting, I interviewed parents in a medium-sized city and a parent-child health retreat clinic about how they use their smartphones for stress management. In the ESS, I additionally drew on theoretical conceptualizations from mobile communication and digital wellbeing research. Over 200 mothers filled in four questionnaires a day for one week and answered questions about a stressful situation that had happened in the last two hours. Both studies showed that when mothers are in stressful situations with their children, they mainly use their phones to distract themselves from the stressful encounter and to find information and support. In the focus groups study, parents reported many instances in which they successfully used their phones for stress coping. In the ESS, mothers, however, experienced a smaller stress decrease in stressful situations in which they used their phone than in situations involving no phone use. Using positive phone content, though, was related to increased coping effectiveness. My dissertation also demonstrated that social norms around maternal smartphone use play an important role when mothers use their phones for coping with stress. To explore this, I suggested a social constructivist viewpoint on media use and media effects. This viewpoint posits that the perception of and feelings around ones own media use are just as important for media effects as characteristics of objectively measurable media use, such as usage time. Further, I argue that these media use perceptions are influenced by what others say about media use and are, thus, socially constructed. Confirming the value of this viewpoint, I show in the ESS that mothers who perceived stronger injunctive norms against parental phone use experienced increased guilt when they used their phone for stress coping. Feelings of guilt around phone use in turn were related to a diminished coping effectiveness. Overall, my dissertation shows that by using positive content, mothers can use their smartphones to their benefit when they are confronted with stressful situations. Negative social norms against parental smartphone use can, by inducing guilt, be associated with diminished coping effectiveness when mothers use their phone to cope with stress. Therefore, academic and public discussions around smartphone use should consider the benefits of smartphone use for parents so that a more nuanced debate does not lead to social pressure and feelings of guilt among parents.
The potential of smartphone apps to collect self-recorded data in agricultural households : a study on time-use in Zambia
(2019) Daum, Thomas; Birner, Regina
Mobile information and communication technologies (ICTs) have spread across the developing world and are used increasingly by smallholder farmers. While the potential of ICTs, such as smartphone applications, to provide new opportunities for agricultural development is widely acknowledged, the potential to use them as research tools has not been explored. This thesis assesses the potential of smartphone applications for the collection of data from agricultural households in developing countries. Can smartphone applications that use visual tools be used for self-recording of data by the respondents themselves where literacy levels are low? Can such smartphone applications that allow for real-time data recording increase the accuracy of the collected data? Answering these questions is important as, so far, data from agricultural households are usually collected using surveys, which are prone to recall biases. This is a problem, as researchers, policymakers and development practitioners need reliable data for their work. Poor data can lead to misguided policy recommendations and actions with adverse effects on vulnerable population groups. This can lead to agricultural development trajectories that are socially unequal and unsustainable. To assess the potential of smartphone apps to collect self-recorded data, a smartphone application called Timetracker was developed as part of this thesis. The Timetracker allows study respondents to record data in real time with the help of illustrations. Recording data in real time reduces recall bias, and using pictures ensures that participants with low literacy can use the application. In its current form, the Timetracker can be used to collect data on time-use and nutrition. Collecting reliable data on time-use and nutrition is key for various strands of research. For example, time-use data are needed to calculate labor productivity and analyze how productivity is affected by new technologies. Time-use data can also help reveal gender-based power relations and asymmetries by pointing out unpaid domestic work. Similarly, nutritional data are crucial for various academic fields and debates. For example, nutritional data are needed to explore the factors determining food and nutrition security, to study how farm diversity affects consumption diversity and to monitor food and nutrition policies and programs. This study is based on three main chapters, which reflect the main objectives of the whole thesis: 1) to explore and test whether smartphone applications can be used to collect data from rural households in developing countries focusing on time-use and nutrition data, 2) to assess the accuracy of data collected with smartphone applications vis-à-vis recall-based data collection methods, and 3) to use the data to understand the effects of agricultural mechanization on the intrahousehold allocation of time-use within smallholder farming households in Zambia. The first two chapters have a primarily methodological focus. The last chapter is an empirical study. This thesis concludes that in addition to improving the accuracy of socioeconomic data collection, smartphone applications may open new research pathways, including through the opportunities provided by real-time data collection and by combining self-recorded data with sensor-recorded data, which may open interesting transdisciplinary research pathways. This thesis suggests that there is a large and still untapped potential for using smartphone applications to collect data on complex agricultural systems in the digital age.