Social Isolation and New Technology

NOTES 3 To minimize any context bias associated with survey fatigue or priming from prior questions, the two name generator questions were located close to the start of the survey. They were placed after a small number of questions about basic internet use that were used to establish trust with the survey participant. 4 Previous research has identified a high degree of overlap between those with whom people “discuss important matters” and those they consider most significant in their lives [9 ]. 5 Unlike the GSS, which is administered face-to-face in participants ’ homes, the Pew survey was administered to participants over the telephone. The use of the telephone in place of face-to-face interviews has the potential to introduce bias as a result of changes to the context of the interview, as well as variation in response rate. In general, telephone surveys have a lower response rate than face-to-face interviews. It is known that higher levels of nonresponse lead to estimates of volunteer activity (and possibly other prosocial activities) that are too high. However, it is also known that these inflated measures of activity do not affect inferences about individual characteristics [1 0]. It is not known if the number of core network member participants report is subject to the same inflation as a result of nonresponse. It is also possible that people have an easier time recalling names in the context of a longer personal interview in the home, than when talking on the telephone – perhaps not even at home (in the case of cell phone interviews). While we have no evidence of a response bias in our survey, if one exists we expect it has little influence on the size of core networks that participants reported, and that introduces no bias into the inferences we draw based on individual characteristics. 6 This approach is consistent with the way McPherson et al (2006) presented “non-kin network size,” but inconsistent with the way in which the “at least one non-kin confidant” variable was presented.