- Email: [email protected]
Translating user control availability into perception: the moderating role of prior experience
Computers in Human Behavior Computers in Human Behavior 23 (2007) 554–563 www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh
Translating user control availability into perception: the moderating role of prior experience Brian G. Southwell *, George Anghelcev, Itai Himelboim, Julie Jones School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota, 111 Murphy Hall, 206 Church Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA Available online 18 November 2004
Abstract On a basic level, perception of user control over media content should be partially a function of control option availability. At the same time, prior user experience with control options should interact with control availability to produce joint effects on control perception. To assess these ideas, we present experimental data from 101 University students in the United States. Participants engaged a documentary in one of three ways: by simply watching the documentary, by watching the documentary with the option of using typical VCR-type controls (such as fast-forward or reverse), or by watching and having available both VCR-type controls and scene sequencing control. Data support our hypotheses. While there was a generally positive relationship between exposure to user control options and user control perception across all participants, those participants with relatively less prior experience with Internet-based applications demonstrated a somewhat different relationship between control availability and control perception. Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 612 624 2491. E-mail address: [email protected] (B.G. Southwell).
0747-5632/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2004.10.025
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1. Introduction As Herring (2004) has noted, scholars and pundits recently have used the phrase ‘‘new media’’ to refer to communication technologies that rely on digital means of content distribution (as opposed to analog broadcast, for example) and, consequently, allow for some degree of formal interactivity between user and content. This general notion, in turn, has prompted calls for theoretical and methodological revolution. Weinberger (2002), for example, has suggested that the Internet, a prime example of a new media phenomenon, has spawned a ‘‘new world’’ that requires radically new thinking. Similarly, Mitra and Cohen (1999) and Wakeford (2000) suggest that new media should be studied using new methods. While research in this area undoubtedly is warranted, however, a different stance is justifiable. Rather than investigating so-called new media as wholly separate from previously existing areas for inquiry, a more useful approach toward the advent of new communication technology is to investigate the impact of specific media attributes on human experience with mediated content and to assess the degree to which various media possess such attributes. (After all, todayÕs old media, e.g., books or television, were once new themselves and each grew out of an existing milieu by adding new possibilities to old ones.) As Eveland (2003) has argued, in other words, many contemporary and emerging media applications are not completely new and unique but rather encompass a mix of different theoretically important attributes. Certainly, new media technologies may differ from past counterparts in their typical demonstration of attributes. For the purposes of theory building, however, it is crucial to focus on the attributes themselves and on human inclination toward those attributes. One attribute of electronic communication technology that is relevant to many socalled new media applications and yet that also continues to be theoretically elusive is the notion of user control. Investigation of user control is not new; for a number of years, researchers focused on psychology and human performance have investigated the consequences of allowing or facilitating individual control over stimuli, e.g., see Stanney, Kingdon, Graeber, and Kennedy (2002) or Jordan and Knoblich (2004) for discussion. For our purposes here, however, we will consider user control to generally refer to a body of options (either literal or perceived, as discussed below) for control over the pacing and narrative organization of presented media content. In turn, we can view user control as a specific dimension (or at least correlate) of more amorphous (though undoubtedly popular) constructs such as interactivity (McMillan & Hwang, 2002) or flow (Csiksentmihalyi, 1990, 1996; Novak, Hoffman, & Yung, 2000). While virtually any electronic media application, from the earliest television sets to hand-held DVD players, theoretically affords some degree of input from a user, a number of scholars in recent years have focused on user control as an attribute that is theoretically available to a larger degree in many emerging digital media environments than previously has been the case, e.g., Shin, Schallert, and Savenye (1994), Niemiec et al. (1996), Dillon and Gabbard (1998), Eveland and Dunwoody (2002), Liu and Shrum (2002), McMillan and Hwang (2002). Many contemporary media
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applications, for example, now formally allow individual user feedback to affect and be incorporated into the stream of presented information (Friedman, 1995). Moreover, user control appears to matter, as a variety of scholars have demonstrated relationships between measures of the construct and memory, learning, and engagement, e.g., Eveland and Dunwoody (2001) or Southwell and Lee (2004). 1.1. User control hypotheses Often, user control has been measured with what we might call objective indicators of allowed control options. Increasingly, however, scholars are advocating a shift toward an approach focused more directly on usersÕ (subjective) perceptions (Lee, 2000; Liu & Shrum, 2002; McMillan & Hwang, 2002). There is solid justification for this move. As Reeves and Nass (1996) note with regard to human engagement with media in general, perceptions of media attributes are often as important as the reality of those attributes from a more objective perspective. At the same time, important work remains in terms of documenting the relationship between control availability and control perception. On a simple level, we expect there to be a direct relationship between availability and perception. McMillan and Hwang (2002), for example, have documented a generally positive relationship between availability of control options and perceptions of control. Here, then, we would expect that measures of control perception will demonstrate a monotonically increasing relationship with exposure to control options and can expect the following basic hypothesis to find support across all users. Hypothesis 1. Across all users, availability of options for user control will be positively associated with perception of control. Theoretically, however, there also should be limits to this positive relationship if we accept that humans have only a limited capacity for engaging media content, e.g., Broadbent (1958) or Lang (2000). At some point, the availability of additional options is likely only to overwhelm or frustrate the user and the relationship between availability and content should flatten or even turn downward, producing an inverted, u-shaped relationship between availability and perception. Moreover, a related and important question also stands: Are user control possibilities equally perceived by all users? Certainly, past work suggests that all users are not the same. For example, some have more experience than others in using certain Internet-based applications; that experience, in turn, appears to be predictive of oneÕs skill in using various applications (Novak et al., 2000). If the potential for perceived control varies among individuals as a function of their previous experience or other factors, then perhaps increases in available controls will not lead to greater perception of control in the same fashion for all users. Perhaps some users can be overwhelmed by an abundance of unfamiliar options. That possibility is central to our investigation here. We expect that perceived control will increase as long as available control matches a userÕs general experience. When available control options exceed a userÕs skills, however, a critical shift is likely to occur. At that point, instead of feeling in control
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a user is likely to feel overwhelmed or frustrated and to hold a perception of lessened control. Excessive cognitive load is likely to function as a mechanism through which a user is faced with more than they can handle, despite the intentions of the software designer. Here, we can see the likely realization of the u-shaped relationship possibilities noted earlier. Experience essentially should affect the location of the inflection point of the availability-perception relationship where a positive association turns negative. Consequently, in practical terms, the likelihood of witnessing such an inflection in a particular context could be affected by the amount of relevant past media use experience among those being queried. The more experienced users are, the less likely that the inflection point is likely to appear at low levels of availability. For less experienced users, however, the shift point is likely to appear at a relatively low level of control availability. In other words, we hypothesize that the availability-perception relationship maximum will occur at a lower point for less experienced users than for more experienced users. In the present study, in which we investigate user control options that are now increasingly prevalent, only the least experienced users are likely to report control perception reduction at high levels of control availability. Hypothesis 2. Prior user experience will interact with control availability to produce joint effects on control perception, such that those with less experience will be more likely to witness a relative decrease in control perception at high levels of control availability.
2. Methods 2.1. Procedure We obtained experimental data from 101 university students in the United States. Each participant was compensated for her or his time either with a $12 gift card redeemable at a local department store or extra class participation credit. Participants were assigned randomly to engage a digitized video documentary in one of three conditions: a condition in which viewers simply watched the documentary (n = 38), a condition in which viewers were allowed typical VCR-type controls such as fast-forward or reverse (n = 26), or a condition in which individuals could both use VCR-type controls and exercise scene sequencing control by selecting the order in which they watched various scenes (n = 37). After completing the viewing session, each participant completed a survey using the same Macromedia AuthorwareÓ program in which the documentary was presented. 2.2. Measures The aforementioned three experimental condition levels comprised our measure of control availability, with the pacing and sequencing options condition representing the
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highest level of control allowed and the simple viewing condition representing the lowest. Immediately after engaging the media presentation, all participants also were asked to respond to a series of five-point scale items regarding their agreement with statements about their perceived control over the content. Statements suggested that the ‘‘media presentation that I just viewed provided me’’ one of the following: ‘‘control over my overall viewing experience’’, ‘‘freedom to explore the content’’, ‘‘control over order in which I viewed parts of content’’, and ‘‘control over how long I viewed content’’. The mean of these four items (which in practice ranged fully from 1.0 to 5.0 across participants in this sample) provided a useful overall scale of perceived control, with an Alpha of 0.77 and item-total correlations of 0.55 or greater for each individual item. We assessed prior experience with relevant Internet-based applications through a series of questions about oneÕs past behavior. Specifically, we asked how often participants used the Internet in the past six months and whether they had ever watched a video or film over the Internet. These questions afforded a categorical measure of relevant Internet-application experience. Those who reported less than weekly Internet use in recent months and who had never watched a video or film over the Internet were deemed to be relatively low in experience. (In practice, this group represented approximately 12% of participants.) Those who reported at least weekly Internet use in recent months and reported having watched a video or film over the Internet were deemed high in experience. (This group represented almost half of participants.) The remaining participants, who either used the Internet relatively frequently or had used the Internet for video or film watching, were categorized as having a medium level of experience.
3. Results Results support our hypotheses. Control availability and control perception are related. Those afforded more opportunities for control tended to report higher perceptions of control. Participants assigned to the condition in which they were allowed to control both pacing and scene sequencing when engaging the documentary generally were the most likely to report that they had control over their media use experience. At the same time, that relationship between availability and perception also varies as a function of previous Internet application experience. With regard to Hypothesis 1, a generally positive relationship is apparent between control availability and control perception. Fig. 1 illustrates that idea. There was a significant difference in mean control perception as a function of experimental condition, as assessed in a simple ANOVA model, F = 34.84, p < 0.01. Moreover, that relationship appears to be positive and monotonically increasing: Gamma (an acceptable indicator of directional relationships for ordinal-level data) was significant and reasonably strong at 0.66, p < 0.01. Hypothesis 2 also received support. Fig. 2 illustrates an intriguing array of relationships between availability and perception as a function of previous Internet-application experience, whereby those with little such experience reported the greatest sense of control for the medium control availability condition (and not for the high
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mean control perception
5.0
4.0
3.0
2.0
1.0 low (TV)
medium (VCR)
high (new media)
level of available control Fig. 1. General relationship between available control and perceived control.
5.0
4.0
mean control perception
3.0
past experience low
2.0
medium high 1.0 low (TV)
medium (VCR)
high (new media)
level of available control Fig. 2. Interaction of experience and availability in predicting perception (lines interpolated).
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control availability condition). The significance of this general pattern is confirmed in an ANOVA model including a significant effect of experimental condition, p < 0.05, and a significant interaction between condition and past experience, p < 0.05. For that model, R2 was 0.45, which represents a sizable proportion of variance explained. A comparison of gammas describing the direction of the control availability and control perception relationship for each experience level also is revealing. Gamma climbs from 0.25 and not significant, p > 0.10, for the low experience group to 0.57 and 0.75, with p < 0.01 for both, for the medium and high experience levels, respectively. In other words, it appears that only the medium and high experience groups witnessed a significant, monotonically increasing relationship between control availability and control perception.
4. Discussion These data and analyses underscore OÕKeefeÕs (2003) argument that we should view what typically are dismissed as mere ‘‘manipulation checks’’ instead as substantive empirical opportunities. He suggests that efforts to validate assignment to experimental condition through assessment of individual perception measures – such as we employed here – offer a chance to look at the effects of conditional assignment on perceptions. Simple physical exposure to a condition is not the same as individual perception of that state. Comparison of data related to each construct, however, can provide both nomological validation evidence and a look at important interactions. In this case, an intriguing story emerges regarding the translation of exposure into perception. While there was a generally positive relationship between exposure to user control options and user control perception across all participants, those participants with the least prior experience with Internet-based media applications demonstrated a less straightforward relationship between control options and control perception. Those least experienced individuals actually reported the greatest control perception for the medium-level control availability condition, the context most similar to typical VCR use. (In fact, those least experienced reported greater control on average in that condition that did even their counterparts in that condition, p < 0.05, which might reflect somewhat naı¨ve enthusiasm.) It is likely that that specific situation – and not the situation we actually intended to offer ‘‘high user control’’ – represented the optimal match of options and skills for the inexperienced group. These results have important implications for user control measurement. On the one hand, these results provide general nomological validation for a user control perception measure, as outlined above. Variance in perception does appear to be tied to variance in the physical reality of media environments (philosophical debates about reality aside). At the same time, these results also underscore the importance of taking individual-level variables into account when assessing user control possibilities. Simply stated, these results suggest that we cannot assume that a specific user control option will be perceived as control-enhancing by all users. Some users, especially those with relatively little relevant experience, may be overwhelmed by an abundance of options and may feel most in control in less complex situations. That means that a
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simple count of technological bells and whistles included in a media application may not be a suitable measure of the nature of human engagement with media content, at least not for all types of users. These data certainly have limits. In fact, this study invites future inquiry precisely because these provocative results are agnostic as to several key questions. One question for further exploration, for example, concerns the exact theoretical mechanism through which media use experience affects the translation of control option availability into perception. On a basic level, experience simply could lend certain technical skills necessary to take full advantage of provided options. Another possibility lies in potential differences in working memory capacity and executive attention (see Engle, 2002, for discussion) that both lead to differences in patterns of digital media use and to differences in oneÕs ability to cope with extensive user control options. A third option is that lack of experience does not reflect lack of skills or low working memory capacity but instead simply a tendency to be anxious when presented with new and unfamiliar tasks; perhaps that anxiety somehow interferes with control perceptions. Future studies should investigate these possibilities to assess more directly why reported experience plays a moderating role. Future efforts also might further refine the measures employed here, especially with regard to experience. Rather than using an ordinal indicator of past experience level, it might be possible to develop an interval-level measure of the extent of oneÕs relevant experience with media devices rich in user control options or to test oneÕs knowledge of how to use various control options directly. On a different plane, it might also be possible to employ a ‘‘think aloud’’ protocol (see van Someren, Barnard, & Sandberg, 1994, for discussion) to assess qualitatively how users engage control options in real time as they use them instead of having them report after the fact. There also are a host of outcome variables that might be a function of perceived user control and thus could offer fruitful opportunities for future inquiry. For example, consider enjoyment. On the one hand, we might speculate that those who lack perceived control also are consequently less likely to enjoy the media content in question or are more likely to be bored or frustrated. In general, that would suggest offering more control options might facilitate enjoyment. At the same time, however, we also discussed in this article reason to believe some users might require a different approach. It could be the case that for some sets of inexperienced users having a wide array of unfamiliar options available to manipulate electronic content might be less gratifying than having a more straightforward and limited interface. Even beyond those considerations, we also might wonder about situations in which control could be inversely linked to gratification. What if lack of control actually is enjoyable or gratifying or at least somehow useful under some circumstances? Perhaps people do not want to be in control when they use digital media content to relax or unwind. We also need further work to understand the relationship of control to learning outcomes. There have been numerous advances in this area already. For example, it appears that allowing control generally might enhance overall engagement with (and understanding of) material, e.g., Eveland and Dunwoody (2001), and yet we also know that provision of user control can exacerbate the memory encoding inhibition
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that stems from exposure to content with complex editing, e.g., Southwell and Lee (2004). In light of the measurement ideas presented here, we can now pursue further work on these questions.
5. Conclusions We began this discussion with an assertion that measurement of the user control construct should incorporate assessment of subjective, individual perception of control. Experimental data confirms that such perception is related to the physical availability of control in media applications. At the same time, such data also suggest that the availability-perception relationship is at least partially a function of individual experience. OneÕs past experience – perhaps a proxy for navigation skills or knowledge or working memory capacity – moderates the translation of afforded control into realized control. On a broader level, because we know that user control is an important component of the larger (albeit more abstract) notion of interactivity, these results underscore the idea that the nature of human engagement with so-called interactive media is a function not only of available media features but also of individual past experience. Software designers and communication professionals who work with the Internet should recognize either that paring back control options might make sense for some audiences or that some degree of training is likely necessary for the optimal experience of control for many applications. In the academic domain, by assessing the prior media use history of individuals and explicitly incorporating an expectation of variance in prior history into our understanding of media use, we can broaden our measurement, prediction, and explanation of engagement with the changing media environment.
Acknowledgements This study was made possible by a Grant-In-Aid award from the University of Minnesota. Jennifer Swedell of the University of Minnesota developed software applications that facilitated this work. Mira Lee (now at Michigan State University) was invaluable in the data construction process. The authors also are grateful for reviewer and editor suggestions for improvement.
References Broadbent, D. E. (1958). Perception and communication. New York: Pergamon Press. Csiksentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper and Row. Csiksentmihalyi, M. (1996). Finding flow: The psychology of engagement with everyday life. New York: Harper and Row. Dillon, A., & Gabbard, R. (1998). Hypermedia as an educational technology: a review of the quantitative research literature on learner comprehension, control, and style. Review of Educational Research, 68, 322–349.
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Engle, R. W. (2002). Working memory capacity as executive attention. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11(1), 19–23. Eveland, W. P., & Dunwoody, S. (2001). User control and structural isomorphism or disorientation and cognitive load? Learning from the web versus print. Communication Research, 28, 48–78. Eveland, W. P., & Dunwoody, S. (2002). An investigation of elaboration and selective scanning as mediators of learning from the web versus print. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 46(1), 34–53. Eveland, W. P. (2003). A ‘‘mix of attributes’’ approach to the study of media effects and new communication technologies. Journal of Communication, 53(3), 395–410. Friedman, T. (1995). Making sense of software: Computer games and interactive textuality. In S. G. Jones (Ed.), Cybersociety: Computer-mediated communication and community (pp. 73–89). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Herring, S. C. (2004). Content analysis for new media: rethinking the paradigm. Presented at New Research for New Media: Innovative Research Methodologies Symposium. Tarragona, Spain. Jordan, J. S., & Knoblich, G. (2004). Spatial perception and control. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 11(1), 54–59. Lang, A. (2000). The limited capacity model of mediated message processing. Journal of Communication, 50(1), 46–70. Lee, J. S. (2000). Interactivity: a new approach. Presented at Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Annual Conference. Phoenix, AZ. Liu, Y., & Shrum, L. J. (2002). What is interactivity and is it always such a good thing. Journal of Advertising, 16(4), 53–64. McMillan, S. J., & Hwang, J. (2002). Measures of perceived interactivity: an exploration of the role of direction of communication, user control, and time in shaping perceptions of interactivity. Journal of Advertising, 31(3), 29–43. Mitra, A., & Cohen, E. (1999). Analyzing the web: Directions and challenges. In S. Jones (Ed.), Doing Internet research: Critical issues and methods for examining the net (pp. 179–202). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Niemiec, R. P., Sikorski, C., & Walberg, H. J. (1996). Learner-control effects: a review of reviews and a meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 15, 157–174. Novak, T. P., Hoffman, D. L., & Yung, Y. F. (2000). Measuring the customer experience in online environments: a structural modeling approach. Marketing Science, 19(1), 22–44. OÕKeefe, D. J. (2003). Message properties, mediating states, and manipulation checks: claims, evidence, and data analysis in experimental persuasive message effects research. Communication Theory, 13(3), 251–274. Reeves, B., & Nass, C. (1996). The media equation: How people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places. New York: Cambridge University Press. Shin, E. C., Schallert, D. L., & Savenye, W. C. (1994). Effects of learner control, advisement, and prior knowledge on young studentsÕ learning in a hypertext environment. Educational Technology Research and Development, 42(1), 33–46. Southwell B. G. & Lee M. (2004). A pitfall of new media? User controls exacerbate editing effects on memory. Presented at International Communication Association Annual Conference. New Orleans, LA. Stanney, K. M., Kingdon, K. S., Graeber, D., & Kennedy, R. S. (2002). Human performance in immersive virtual environments: effects of exposure duration, user control, and scene complexity. Human Performance, 15(4), 339–366. van Someren, M. W., Barnard, Y. F., & Sandberg, J. A. C. (1994). The think aloud method. London: Academic Press. Wakeford, N. (2000). New media, new methodologies: Studying the web. In D. Gauntlett (Ed.), Web studies: Rewiring media studies for the digital age (pp. 31–42). London: Arnold. Weinberger, D. (2002). Small pieces loosely joined: A unified theory of the web. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing.
Translating user control availability into perception: the moderating role of prior experience Brian G. Southwell *, George Anghelcev, Itai Himelboim, Julie Jones School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota, 111 Murphy Hall, 206 Church Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA Available online 18 November 2004
Abstract On a basic level, perception of user control over media content should be partially a function of control option availability. At the same time, prior user experience with control options should interact with control availability to produce joint effects on control perception. To assess these ideas, we present experimental data from 101 University students in the United States. Participants engaged a documentary in one of three ways: by simply watching the documentary, by watching the documentary with the option of using typical VCR-type controls (such as fast-forward or reverse), or by watching and having available both VCR-type controls and scene sequencing control. Data support our hypotheses. While there was a generally positive relationship between exposure to user control options and user control perception across all participants, those participants with relatively less prior experience with Internet-based applications demonstrated a somewhat different relationship between control availability and control perception. Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 612 624 2491. E-mail address: [email protected] (B.G. Southwell).
0747-5632/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2004.10.025
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1. Introduction As Herring (2004) has noted, scholars and pundits recently have used the phrase ‘‘new media’’ to refer to communication technologies that rely on digital means of content distribution (as opposed to analog broadcast, for example) and, consequently, allow for some degree of formal interactivity between user and content. This general notion, in turn, has prompted calls for theoretical and methodological revolution. Weinberger (2002), for example, has suggested that the Internet, a prime example of a new media phenomenon, has spawned a ‘‘new world’’ that requires radically new thinking. Similarly, Mitra and Cohen (1999) and Wakeford (2000) suggest that new media should be studied using new methods. While research in this area undoubtedly is warranted, however, a different stance is justifiable. Rather than investigating so-called new media as wholly separate from previously existing areas for inquiry, a more useful approach toward the advent of new communication technology is to investigate the impact of specific media attributes on human experience with mediated content and to assess the degree to which various media possess such attributes. (After all, todayÕs old media, e.g., books or television, were once new themselves and each grew out of an existing milieu by adding new possibilities to old ones.) As Eveland (2003) has argued, in other words, many contemporary and emerging media applications are not completely new and unique but rather encompass a mix of different theoretically important attributes. Certainly, new media technologies may differ from past counterparts in their typical demonstration of attributes. For the purposes of theory building, however, it is crucial to focus on the attributes themselves and on human inclination toward those attributes. One attribute of electronic communication technology that is relevant to many socalled new media applications and yet that also continues to be theoretically elusive is the notion of user control. Investigation of user control is not new; for a number of years, researchers focused on psychology and human performance have investigated the consequences of allowing or facilitating individual control over stimuli, e.g., see Stanney, Kingdon, Graeber, and Kennedy (2002) or Jordan and Knoblich (2004) for discussion. For our purposes here, however, we will consider user control to generally refer to a body of options (either literal or perceived, as discussed below) for control over the pacing and narrative organization of presented media content. In turn, we can view user control as a specific dimension (or at least correlate) of more amorphous (though undoubtedly popular) constructs such as interactivity (McMillan & Hwang, 2002) or flow (Csiksentmihalyi, 1990, 1996; Novak, Hoffman, & Yung, 2000). While virtually any electronic media application, from the earliest television sets to hand-held DVD players, theoretically affords some degree of input from a user, a number of scholars in recent years have focused on user control as an attribute that is theoretically available to a larger degree in many emerging digital media environments than previously has been the case, e.g., Shin, Schallert, and Savenye (1994), Niemiec et al. (1996), Dillon and Gabbard (1998), Eveland and Dunwoody (2002), Liu and Shrum (2002), McMillan and Hwang (2002). Many contemporary media
556
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applications, for example, now formally allow individual user feedback to affect and be incorporated into the stream of presented information (Friedman, 1995). Moreover, user control appears to matter, as a variety of scholars have demonstrated relationships between measures of the construct and memory, learning, and engagement, e.g., Eveland and Dunwoody (2001) or Southwell and Lee (2004). 1.1. User control hypotheses Often, user control has been measured with what we might call objective indicators of allowed control options. Increasingly, however, scholars are advocating a shift toward an approach focused more directly on usersÕ (subjective) perceptions (Lee, 2000; Liu & Shrum, 2002; McMillan & Hwang, 2002). There is solid justification for this move. As Reeves and Nass (1996) note with regard to human engagement with media in general, perceptions of media attributes are often as important as the reality of those attributes from a more objective perspective. At the same time, important work remains in terms of documenting the relationship between control availability and control perception. On a simple level, we expect there to be a direct relationship between availability and perception. McMillan and Hwang (2002), for example, have documented a generally positive relationship between availability of control options and perceptions of control. Here, then, we would expect that measures of control perception will demonstrate a monotonically increasing relationship with exposure to control options and can expect the following basic hypothesis to find support across all users. Hypothesis 1. Across all users, availability of options for user control will be positively associated with perception of control. Theoretically, however, there also should be limits to this positive relationship if we accept that humans have only a limited capacity for engaging media content, e.g., Broadbent (1958) or Lang (2000). At some point, the availability of additional options is likely only to overwhelm or frustrate the user and the relationship between availability and content should flatten or even turn downward, producing an inverted, u-shaped relationship between availability and perception. Moreover, a related and important question also stands: Are user control possibilities equally perceived by all users? Certainly, past work suggests that all users are not the same. For example, some have more experience than others in using certain Internet-based applications; that experience, in turn, appears to be predictive of oneÕs skill in using various applications (Novak et al., 2000). If the potential for perceived control varies among individuals as a function of their previous experience or other factors, then perhaps increases in available controls will not lead to greater perception of control in the same fashion for all users. Perhaps some users can be overwhelmed by an abundance of unfamiliar options. That possibility is central to our investigation here. We expect that perceived control will increase as long as available control matches a userÕs general experience. When available control options exceed a userÕs skills, however, a critical shift is likely to occur. At that point, instead of feeling in control
B.G. Southwell et al. / Computers in Human Behavior 23 (2007) 554–563
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a user is likely to feel overwhelmed or frustrated and to hold a perception of lessened control. Excessive cognitive load is likely to function as a mechanism through which a user is faced with more than they can handle, despite the intentions of the software designer. Here, we can see the likely realization of the u-shaped relationship possibilities noted earlier. Experience essentially should affect the location of the inflection point of the availability-perception relationship where a positive association turns negative. Consequently, in practical terms, the likelihood of witnessing such an inflection in a particular context could be affected by the amount of relevant past media use experience among those being queried. The more experienced users are, the less likely that the inflection point is likely to appear at low levels of availability. For less experienced users, however, the shift point is likely to appear at a relatively low level of control availability. In other words, we hypothesize that the availability-perception relationship maximum will occur at a lower point for less experienced users than for more experienced users. In the present study, in which we investigate user control options that are now increasingly prevalent, only the least experienced users are likely to report control perception reduction at high levels of control availability. Hypothesis 2. Prior user experience will interact with control availability to produce joint effects on control perception, such that those with less experience will be more likely to witness a relative decrease in control perception at high levels of control availability.
2. Methods 2.1. Procedure We obtained experimental data from 101 university students in the United States. Each participant was compensated for her or his time either with a $12 gift card redeemable at a local department store or extra class participation credit. Participants were assigned randomly to engage a digitized video documentary in one of three conditions: a condition in which viewers simply watched the documentary (n = 38), a condition in which viewers were allowed typical VCR-type controls such as fast-forward or reverse (n = 26), or a condition in which individuals could both use VCR-type controls and exercise scene sequencing control by selecting the order in which they watched various scenes (n = 37). After completing the viewing session, each participant completed a survey using the same Macromedia AuthorwareÓ program in which the documentary was presented. 2.2. Measures The aforementioned three experimental condition levels comprised our measure of control availability, with the pacing and sequencing options condition representing the
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highest level of control allowed and the simple viewing condition representing the lowest. Immediately after engaging the media presentation, all participants also were asked to respond to a series of five-point scale items regarding their agreement with statements about their perceived control over the content. Statements suggested that the ‘‘media presentation that I just viewed provided me’’ one of the following: ‘‘control over my overall viewing experience’’, ‘‘freedom to explore the content’’, ‘‘control over order in which I viewed parts of content’’, and ‘‘control over how long I viewed content’’. The mean of these four items (which in practice ranged fully from 1.0 to 5.0 across participants in this sample) provided a useful overall scale of perceived control, with an Alpha of 0.77 and item-total correlations of 0.55 or greater for each individual item. We assessed prior experience with relevant Internet-based applications through a series of questions about oneÕs past behavior. Specifically, we asked how often participants used the Internet in the past six months and whether they had ever watched a video or film over the Internet. These questions afforded a categorical measure of relevant Internet-application experience. Those who reported less than weekly Internet use in recent months and who had never watched a video or film over the Internet were deemed to be relatively low in experience. (In practice, this group represented approximately 12% of participants.) Those who reported at least weekly Internet use in recent months and reported having watched a video or film over the Internet were deemed high in experience. (This group represented almost half of participants.) The remaining participants, who either used the Internet relatively frequently or had used the Internet for video or film watching, were categorized as having a medium level of experience.
3. Results Results support our hypotheses. Control availability and control perception are related. Those afforded more opportunities for control tended to report higher perceptions of control. Participants assigned to the condition in which they were allowed to control both pacing and scene sequencing when engaging the documentary generally were the most likely to report that they had control over their media use experience. At the same time, that relationship between availability and perception also varies as a function of previous Internet application experience. With regard to Hypothesis 1, a generally positive relationship is apparent between control availability and control perception. Fig. 1 illustrates that idea. There was a significant difference in mean control perception as a function of experimental condition, as assessed in a simple ANOVA model, F = 34.84, p < 0.01. Moreover, that relationship appears to be positive and monotonically increasing: Gamma (an acceptable indicator of directional relationships for ordinal-level data) was significant and reasonably strong at 0.66, p < 0.01. Hypothesis 2 also received support. Fig. 2 illustrates an intriguing array of relationships between availability and perception as a function of previous Internet-application experience, whereby those with little such experience reported the greatest sense of control for the medium control availability condition (and not for the high
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mean control perception
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medium (VCR)
high (new media)
level of available control Fig. 1. General relationship between available control and perceived control.
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medium high 1.0 low (TV)
medium (VCR)
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level of available control Fig. 2. Interaction of experience and availability in predicting perception (lines interpolated).
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control availability condition). The significance of this general pattern is confirmed in an ANOVA model including a significant effect of experimental condition, p < 0.05, and a significant interaction between condition and past experience, p < 0.05. For that model, R2 was 0.45, which represents a sizable proportion of variance explained. A comparison of gammas describing the direction of the control availability and control perception relationship for each experience level also is revealing. Gamma climbs from 0.25 and not significant, p > 0.10, for the low experience group to 0.57 and 0.75, with p < 0.01 for both, for the medium and high experience levels, respectively. In other words, it appears that only the medium and high experience groups witnessed a significant, monotonically increasing relationship between control availability and control perception.
4. Discussion These data and analyses underscore OÕKeefeÕs (2003) argument that we should view what typically are dismissed as mere ‘‘manipulation checks’’ instead as substantive empirical opportunities. He suggests that efforts to validate assignment to experimental condition through assessment of individual perception measures – such as we employed here – offer a chance to look at the effects of conditional assignment on perceptions. Simple physical exposure to a condition is not the same as individual perception of that state. Comparison of data related to each construct, however, can provide both nomological validation evidence and a look at important interactions. In this case, an intriguing story emerges regarding the translation of exposure into perception. While there was a generally positive relationship between exposure to user control options and user control perception across all participants, those participants with the least prior experience with Internet-based media applications demonstrated a less straightforward relationship between control options and control perception. Those least experienced individuals actually reported the greatest control perception for the medium-level control availability condition, the context most similar to typical VCR use. (In fact, those least experienced reported greater control on average in that condition that did even their counterparts in that condition, p < 0.05, which might reflect somewhat naı¨ve enthusiasm.) It is likely that that specific situation – and not the situation we actually intended to offer ‘‘high user control’’ – represented the optimal match of options and skills for the inexperienced group. These results have important implications for user control measurement. On the one hand, these results provide general nomological validation for a user control perception measure, as outlined above. Variance in perception does appear to be tied to variance in the physical reality of media environments (philosophical debates about reality aside). At the same time, these results also underscore the importance of taking individual-level variables into account when assessing user control possibilities. Simply stated, these results suggest that we cannot assume that a specific user control option will be perceived as control-enhancing by all users. Some users, especially those with relatively little relevant experience, may be overwhelmed by an abundance of options and may feel most in control in less complex situations. That means that a
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simple count of technological bells and whistles included in a media application may not be a suitable measure of the nature of human engagement with media content, at least not for all types of users. These data certainly have limits. In fact, this study invites future inquiry precisely because these provocative results are agnostic as to several key questions. One question for further exploration, for example, concerns the exact theoretical mechanism through which media use experience affects the translation of control option availability into perception. On a basic level, experience simply could lend certain technical skills necessary to take full advantage of provided options. Another possibility lies in potential differences in working memory capacity and executive attention (see Engle, 2002, for discussion) that both lead to differences in patterns of digital media use and to differences in oneÕs ability to cope with extensive user control options. A third option is that lack of experience does not reflect lack of skills or low working memory capacity but instead simply a tendency to be anxious when presented with new and unfamiliar tasks; perhaps that anxiety somehow interferes with control perceptions. Future studies should investigate these possibilities to assess more directly why reported experience plays a moderating role. Future efforts also might further refine the measures employed here, especially with regard to experience. Rather than using an ordinal indicator of past experience level, it might be possible to develop an interval-level measure of the extent of oneÕs relevant experience with media devices rich in user control options or to test oneÕs knowledge of how to use various control options directly. On a different plane, it might also be possible to employ a ‘‘think aloud’’ protocol (see van Someren, Barnard, & Sandberg, 1994, for discussion) to assess qualitatively how users engage control options in real time as they use them instead of having them report after the fact. There also are a host of outcome variables that might be a function of perceived user control and thus could offer fruitful opportunities for future inquiry. For example, consider enjoyment. On the one hand, we might speculate that those who lack perceived control also are consequently less likely to enjoy the media content in question or are more likely to be bored or frustrated. In general, that would suggest offering more control options might facilitate enjoyment. At the same time, however, we also discussed in this article reason to believe some users might require a different approach. It could be the case that for some sets of inexperienced users having a wide array of unfamiliar options available to manipulate electronic content might be less gratifying than having a more straightforward and limited interface. Even beyond those considerations, we also might wonder about situations in which control could be inversely linked to gratification. What if lack of control actually is enjoyable or gratifying or at least somehow useful under some circumstances? Perhaps people do not want to be in control when they use digital media content to relax or unwind. We also need further work to understand the relationship of control to learning outcomes. There have been numerous advances in this area already. For example, it appears that allowing control generally might enhance overall engagement with (and understanding of) material, e.g., Eveland and Dunwoody (2001), and yet we also know that provision of user control can exacerbate the memory encoding inhibition
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that stems from exposure to content with complex editing, e.g., Southwell and Lee (2004). In light of the measurement ideas presented here, we can now pursue further work on these questions.
5. Conclusions We began this discussion with an assertion that measurement of the user control construct should incorporate assessment of subjective, individual perception of control. Experimental data confirms that such perception is related to the physical availability of control in media applications. At the same time, such data also suggest that the availability-perception relationship is at least partially a function of individual experience. OneÕs past experience – perhaps a proxy for navigation skills or knowledge or working memory capacity – moderates the translation of afforded control into realized control. On a broader level, because we know that user control is an important component of the larger (albeit more abstract) notion of interactivity, these results underscore the idea that the nature of human engagement with so-called interactive media is a function not only of available media features but also of individual past experience. Software designers and communication professionals who work with the Internet should recognize either that paring back control options might make sense for some audiences or that some degree of training is likely necessary for the optimal experience of control for many applications. In the academic domain, by assessing the prior media use history of individuals and explicitly incorporating an expectation of variance in prior history into our understanding of media use, we can broaden our measurement, prediction, and explanation of engagement with the changing media environment.
Acknowledgements This study was made possible by a Grant-In-Aid award from the University of Minnesota. Jennifer Swedell of the University of Minnesota developed software applications that facilitated this work. Mira Lee (now at Michigan State University) was invaluable in the data construction process. The authors also are grateful for reviewer and editor suggestions for improvement.
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