School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080, USA.
Dev Psychol. 2012 Mar;48(2):295-302. doi: 10.1037/a0025914. Epub 2011 Oct 17.
This article presents an innovative method for capturing the content of adolescents' electronic communication on handheld devices: text messaging, e-mail, and instant messaging. In an ongoing longitudinal study, adolescents were provided with BlackBerry devices with service plans paid for by the investigators, and use of text messaging was examined when participants were 15 years old and in the 10th grade (N = 175; 81 girls). BlackBerries were configured so that the content of all text messages, e-mail messages, and instant messages was saved to a secure server and organized in a highly secure, searchable, online archive. This article describes the technology used to devise this method and ethical considerations. Evidence for validity is presented, including both information on use of text messaging to show that participants used these devices heavily and frequencies of profane and sexual language in a 2-day sample of text messaging to demonstrate that they were communicating openly.
短信、电子邮件和即时消息。在一项正在进行的纵向研究中,研究人员为青少年提供了带有服务计划的 BlackBerry 设备,当参与者 15 岁和 10 年级时(N = 175;81 名女生),研究人员检查了短信的使用情况。BlackBerry 被配置为将所有短信、电子邮件和即时消息的内容保存到一个安全的服务器,并在一个高度安全、可搜索的在线档案中进行组织。本文介绍了设计这种方法所使用的技术和伦理考虑。本文还提供了有效性的证据,包括使用短信使用情况的信息来表明参与者大量使用这些设备,以及在两天的短信样本中使用亵渎和色情语言的频率来表明他们的交流是开放的。