09:35 - 10:35 am: Contributed Paper Session 2

Exploring the lived experiences of online worshipers

Matthew B. Broaddus — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 09:35:00 PST

This ongoing qualitative study uses long interviews to seek to understand the lived experiences of individuals who participate in online church services. Online church has rapidly grown in the past few years and many Americans have participated in, or are willing to participate in, alternatives to traditional worship. Many churches are adopting online formats as a way to address the interest of individuals in alternative worship experiences. This study seeks to understand how individuals use online worship and how it plays into their spiritual lives.

Collegiate Assimilation and Current Quality of High School Friendships

Weston Duke et al. — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 09:35:00 PST

Jablin’s (1982) organizational assimilation theory states that as individuals are assimilated into a new organization, new relationships are formed. The formation of new relationships means that less effort can be committed to maintaining past relationships. This study investigated whether a college student’s progression through the phases of organizational assimilation via- encounter, metamorphosis, and exit phases, were predictive of the current quality of high school friendships. The results demonstrated that an individual’s progression through each phase of assimilation was not predictive of past friendship quality.

Got Game? An Investigation of Parents’ Understanding of and Attitudes Toward Advergaming

Nathan Evans — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 09:35:00 PST

To date, limited research has attempted to understand parental perceptions of and attitudes toward Internet advertising directed at children. As part of a larger study, three phases of research were conducted. The first two phases, qualitative interviews with six parents of children seven to eleven and quantitative pretesting with twenty different parents, were exploratory in nature to determine parents’ understanding of the advergaming concept, their awareness of their children’s exposure to advergaming, and finalize an operational definition of advergaming. A self-administered online survey was given to a diverse sample of 214 parents of children ages seven to 11 via E-Rewards.com, an online opinion panel. Of the 214 respondents, 61 (28.5%) parents indicated their child had played an advergame in the past 30 days and 153 (71.5%) parents said their child had not played or did not know. Independent samples t-tests were performed to compare the means for the attitude questions. The analysis revealed seven significant differences between those parents whose child had played advergames within the past 30 days (n=61) versus those who had not (n=153). The results indicate that this is a rich area for exploration.