ANALYSIS OF FACTORS AFFECTING HOURS SPENT ON INTERNET

To understand the factors that affect the internet usage pattern among the students, several factors that are independent in nature were taken up. AS regression analysis was run on the SPSS software, with the following dependent and independent variables: Dependent variable: Independent variables: Hours spent on the interent Age Gender Marital status The purpose of internet use (education, entertainment, communication, Research) Internet services used (email, chat, file sharing, money transactions)

Following are the outputs generated for the regression analysis and the corresponding analysis for the same. Model Summary
Change Statistics Mode l 1 R Square .283 Adjusted R Square .196 Std. Error of the Estimate .916 R Square Change .283 F Change 3.268 Sig. F Change 91 .001

R .532(a)

df1 11

df2

a. Predictors: (Constant), Money transactions, Email, Marital Status, Age, File sharing/transfer, Research, Education, Entertainment, Chat, Communication, Gender b. Dependent Variable: Hours spent This is a summary of the analysis, showing that Hours spent was the dependent variable and the given list of variables were the predictors (independent variables).It displays R, R squared, adjusted R squared, and the standard error. R is the correlation between the observed and predicted values of the dependent variable R squared is the proportion of variation in the dependent variable explained by the regression model. Small values indicate that the model does not fit the data well. The sample R squared is called the coefficient of determination, and defined as the ratio of the sum of squares explained by a regression model and the total sum of squares around the mean.

The R-squared is .283 means that approximately 28.3% of the variance of hours spent on internet is accounted for by the model, in this case, the set of the independent variables. As predictors are added to the model, each predictor will explain some of the variance in the dependent variable simply due to chance. The adjusted R-square attempts to yield a more honest value to estimate the R-squared for the population. The value of R-square was 0.283, while the value of Adjusted R-square was 0.196. Adjusted R-squared is computed using the formula 1 - ((1-R-sq) (N-1 / N - k - 1)). So, when the number of observations is small and the number of predictors is large, there will be a much greater difference between R-square and adjusted R-square (because the ratio of (N-1 / N - k - 1) will be much less than 1. By contrast, when the number of observations is very large compared to the number of predictors, the value of R-square and adjusted R-square will be much closer because the ratio of (N-1)/ (N-k-1) will approach 1. Std. Error of the Estimate is the standard deviation of the error term, and is the square root of the Mean Square Residual (or Error).
ANOVAb Sum of Squares 30.129 76.279 106.408

Model 1

df 11 91 102

Regression Residual Total

Mean Square 2.739 .838

F 3.268

Sig. .001 a

a. Predictors: (Constant), Money trans actions , Email, Marital Status , Age, File sharing/trans f er, Res earc h, Education, Entertainment, Chat, Communic ation, Gender b. Dependent Variable: Hours spent

The F ratio basically tells us whether our experimental grouping has much influence, as compared to variation we would see without having experimental differences. The more the variation caused by experimental factors the larger the F ratio. Sums of Squares for the Regression and Residual add up to the Total Variance, reflecting the fact that the Total Variance is partitioned into Regression and Residual variance.

Sum of Squares Regression gives us the improvement in prediction by using the predicted value of Y over just using the mean of Y. Hence, this would be the squared differences between the predicted value of Y and the mean of Y, S(Ypredicted - Ybar)2. Also, (SS Regression / SS Total) is equal to .2831, the value of R-Square. This is because RSquare is the proportion of the variance explained by the independent variables, hence can be computed by (SS Regression / SS Total).The total variance has N-1 degrees of freedom. In our case, there were N=103 observations, so the DF for total is 102 This table summarizes the results of an analysis of variance. The F statistic is the regression mean square (MSR) divided by the residual mean square (MSE). If the significance value of the F statistic is smaller than 0.05, then the independent variables are said to be doing a good job of explaining the variation in the dependent variable. In our model, the significance value of f statistic is only 0.001(<0.05). Therefore, the null hypothesis that all the population values for the regression coefficients are 0 is rejected. In other words, we can say that, the variance in the dependent variable is not merely by chance and can be explained by the independent variables. However, the value of residual sum of squares is pretty high compared to the regression sum of squares. Hence, even though the model, explains a substantial part of the variance in the dependent variable, we may have to look for additional factors that help account for a higher proportion of the variation in it.

a Coe fficients

Model 1

(Constant) Age Gender Marital Status Education Entertainment Communication Research Email Chat File sharing/transfer Money transactions

Unstandardized Coefficients B Std. Error 2.724 1.455 .095 .193 .226 .241 1.057 .949 -.286 .076 -.011 .099 .075 .109 .092 .102 -.004 .144 -.436 .098 .286 .125 .075 .088

Standardized Coefficients Beta .053 .108 .102 -.379 -.012 .076 .097 -.003 -.475 .239 .083

t 1.872 .490 .938 1.114 -3.781 -.116 .684 .904 -.030 -4.457 2.296 .844

Sig. .064 .625 .351 .268 .000 .908 .496 .368 .976 .000 .024 .401

95% Confidence Interval for B Low er Bound Upper Bound -.167 5.614 -.289 .478 -.252 .704 -.827 2.941 -.437 -.136 -.207 .184 -.142 .291 -.110 .294 -.290 .281 -.630 -.242 .039 .534 -.101 .250

a. Dependent Variable: Hours spent

The constant,2.74, is the height of the regression line when it crosses the Y axis. The independent variables are the predictors (age, gender, marital status, purpose of internet usage(education, entertainment, communication, research), services used on the internet( email, chat, file sharing/transfer, money transaction) and the dependent variable is the number of hours spent on the internet. The t value and 2 tailed p value is used in testing the significance of the coefficients. Coefficients having p values less than 0.05 are significant. So, here we see that the coefficients of the following variables are significant: use of internet for educational purposes, use of chatting services on the internet and file sharing services used on the internet. The unstandardized coefficients are the coefficients of the estimated regression model. The regression equation is presented in many different ways, for example... Ypredicted = b0 + b1*x1 + b2*x2 + _ _ _ _ + bn*xn

Where, b0 is the constant value, b1,b2bn are the coefficients, and x1, x2,xn are the independent variables. On the basis of our coefficients, an estimated model for the number of hourse spent on the internet can be expressed as follows: Hours spent on internet= 2.74 + 0.095X1 + 0.226X2 + 1.057X3 -0.286X4- 0.011X5 + 0.075X6 + 0.092X7 0.004X8 0.436X9 + 0.286X10 + 0.075X11 + e Where, 2.74 is the constant value and e is the error term, X1 age X2 gender X3 marital status

Importance of purpose served by internet : X4 education X6 communication X5 entertainement, X7 research

Frequency of services used on internet : X8 email X11 money transactions However, if we look at the significance values of these coefficients, we see that only the following parameters have coefficients which cannot be treated as equal to zero: X4 Education ( sig .000) X9 Chat ( sig .000) X10 File sharing/transfer (sig .024) So an reducing the coefficients of the other variables to zero, a reduced form of the equation can be expressed as follows: Hours spent on internet= 2.74 -0.286X4 0.436X9 + 0.286X10 + e Using this model, if the values for the independent variables are known, we can approximate the number of hours that person spends on internet. X9 chat X10 file sharing/transfer

EFFECT OF STUDENTS AGE AND GENDER ON THE CATEGORY OF INTERNET SITES HE/SHE VISITS

To understand the impact of the two independent variables (age and gender) on the dependent variable (category of site visited), we ran a regression analysis on each of the category visited. The R values, F values and significance values of each of these incidents have been listed in the table below.

The R values tell us about the percentage of variations that can be explained by our model. The F values are analysed in light of the sig values associated with them. So for the categories having sig values like .812( sites for special purposes), .951( job sites), the model fails to explain the variation.

CATEGORY OF SITE SEARCH ENGINES SITES FOR SPECIAL INTERESTS NEWS/INFORMATIVE SITES ACADEMICS RELATED SITES MUSIC RELATED SITES SPORTS SITES HUMOR SITES GAMING SITES CHAT SITES PORNOGRAPHIC SITES SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES MATRIMONIAL SITES JOB SITES BUSINESS PURPOSES SITES

R VALUE .012 .004 .048 .054 .04 .114 .169 .059 .447 .118 .139 .003 .002 .176

F VALUE .587 .208 2.502 2.878 2.084 6.44 10.39 3.12 40.405 6.8 8.056 .162 .089 10.684

SIG .558 .812 .087 .061 .130 .002 .000 .048 .000 .002 .001 .850 .914 .000

The highlighted rows show the categories of sites that have significance levels much lower than 0.05. For these categories, the low significance levels mean that for these categories, the model explains the effect of gender and age.

The higher the value of F and the lower the significance level, the better it is. As can be seen from the values in the above table, our model suits explanation for the following categories: Sports sites, Humor sites, Chat sites, Pornographic sites, Social networking sites, Business purpose sites. Correspondingly, the R values tell us what percentage of the variations in the dependent variable is explained by the independent variables. So, we can see that for a category like chat sites 44.7 % of the variations are explained by the model. Similarly, for business purpose sites 17.6% of the variations are explained by the model. This means, age and gender do effect the category of sites visited, when it comes to these highlighted categories.

EFFECT OF INTERNET USAGE ON STUDENTS SOCIAL LIFE

To understand the affect of internet usage on the students social life, several factors that are independent in nature were taken up. A regression analysis was run on the SPSS software, with the following dependent and independent variables: Dependent variable: Independent variables: Affect on social life (quantified) Age Gender Hours spent on the internet

Following are the outputs generated for the regression analysis and the corresponding analysis for the same.

Model Summ ary Change Statistics Model 1 R R Square .580 a .336 Adjusted R Square .316 Std. Error of the Estimate .6757 R Square Change .336 F Change 16.707 df1 3 df2 99 Sig. F Change .000

a. Predictors: (Constant), Hours spent, Gender, Age

R-Square is the proportion of variance in the dependent variable (social life) which can be predicted from the independent variables (hours spent on internet, gender, age). This value indicates that 33.6% of the variance in the dependent variable can be predicted from the independent variables. This is an overall measure of the strength of association, and does not reflect the extent to which any particular independent variable is associated with the dependent variable.

ANOVAb Model 1 Sum of Squares 22.884 45.201 68.085 df 3 99 102 Mean Square 7.628 .457 F 16.707 Sig. .000 a

Regression Residual Total

a. Predictors: (Constant), Hours s pent, Gender, Age b. Dependent Variable: avg of ef f ect on social lif e

Since the F statistic is high and has a very low significance value, hence we can say that the independent variables reliably predict the dependent variable. This is an overall significance test assessing whether the group of independent variables when used together reliably predict the dependent variable, and does not address the ability of any of the particular independent variables to predict the dependent variable.

References: http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/spss/webbooks/reg/chapter1/annotated1.htm http://academic.reed.edu/psychology/RDDAwebsite/spssguide/anova.html