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IP: Critics Pick Apart Study on Internet and Depression
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Source: New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/09/biztech/articles/14digicom.html
September 14, 1998
TECHNOLOGY COLUMN
Critics Pick Apart Study on Internet and Depression
By DENISE CARUSO
Robert Kraut, co-author of a new study linking depression with Internet
use, sounded a bit depressed himself last week.
"I thought I was finished with this," Kraut, a professor of social
psychology and human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University,
said with a sigh. He was alluding to the flood of attention -- and
criticism -- that his study, titled "Home Net," had received since it was
published two weeks ago.
Starting in 1995, "Home Net" researchers gave PCs and free Internet
accounts to 169 people in 73 families in the Pittsburgh area. After
monitoring their online behavior, in some cases for more than two years,
the researchers concluded that spending time on the Internet was associated
with statistically significant increases in depression and loneliness.
Critics assert that the study has fatal flaws that neutralize its findings
and that they are appalled at the authors' far-reaching conclusions about
the impact the findings might have on Internet policy and technology
development.
Donna Hoffman, a Vanderbilt University professor and outspoken critic of
Internet research design, was unequivocal about the "Home Net" study.
"Speaking as an editor, if this had crossed my desk, I would have rejected
it," said Ms. Hoffman, who edits the journal Marketing Science. "The
mistakes are so bad that they render the results fairly close to
meaningless."
Among those mistakes, she said, were the absence of two standard
safeguards: a control group and random selection of subjects.
"With 'Home Net,' we don't know for sure what led to their results," Ms.
Hoffman said of the lack of a control group, "because we don't know what
happened to people who weren't using the Internet."
In addition, the study recruited people from high schools and community
service organizations, instead of selecting people randomly from a large
area. Random selection is crucial to building a truly representative sample
of a population -- in this case, residents of the United States.
The study found that one hour a week online led to small but measurable
increases in depression and loneliness and loss of friendships. While those
measurements might well be statistically significant, critics assert that
without a random sample, they are meaningless outside the group that was
studied.
"The assertions have no statistical relevance to any population of Internet
users beyond those in the study population -- even in principle," declared
Charles Brownstein, a former director at the National Science Foundation,
now an executive director at the Corporation for National Research
Initiatives in Reston, Va.
Although research studies do not always have to use control groups or
randomly chosen participants to be valid, Ms. Hoffman said, those
safeguards become imperative "when you're doing a study that claims causal
relationships and that these relationships hold in the larger population."
The "Home Net" team clearly made such claims. For example, the news release
stated that "Carnegie Mellon Study Reveals Negative Potential of Heavy
Internet Use on Emotional Well Being," and even suggested that
parents move PCs out of teen-agers' bedrooms and into shared family rooms.
Kraut was quoted extensively in the release, with such statements as, "We
were surprised to find that what is a social technology has such
anti-social consequences." Also: "Our results have clear implications for
further research on personal Internet use. As we understand the reasons for
the declines in social involvement, there will be implications for social
policies and for the design of Internet technology."
Last week, Kraut wearily defended his study. "In 1995, we did start with a
control group, but it was very hard to keep it, with little in the way of
incentives for them to continue to fill out questionnaires," he said. "And
we couldn't use a random sample because of the nature of the study's design
-- we wanted to be able to include groups who already had social
connections with each other so we could observe some shifting, if it was
going to occur, between existing social relationships."
And despite criticism of the researchers' methods, he said that the study
was widely applicable.
"We have changes big enough that they aren't likely to have occurred on the
basis of chance," Kraut said. "There is something here to explain."
But critics like Ms. Hoffman look askance at such results, given her
experience debunking other Internet studies, including one from Neilsen
Media Research in which she participated in 1996 and another in 1995 in
which Marty Rimm, a graduate student in Carnegie Mellon's College of
Engineering, published a study purporting to show that the Internet was
overrun with pornography.
The impact of Rimm's study, though based on false premises and quickly
discredited, was profound. The resulting furor in the media and in Congress
helped bring about the Communications Decency Act, which the Supreme Court
ruled was a violation of the First Amendment. Critics fear that the "Home
Net" study might end up having a similar effect.
"It's easy to imagine the results of this study being used to influence
policy decisions about Internet access, especially in controversial funding
decisions for schools and libraries," Ms. Hoffman said.
But in the end, Ms. Hoffman said, protecting the Internet itself is not the
point.
"We're trying to protect the standard of research," she said. "This isn't
obscure ivory-tower stuff that never sees the light of day. It has an
impact on people's lives. If we're going to the trouble to study the
Internet, at least we should make sure we're doing it right."
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
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Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: [email protected]>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'