Although the experimenter had several hypotheses at the beginning of this study, most of these were not supported by the results. The data did not uphold the hypothesis that male and female trends of dishonesty would fall into self-centered and other-centered categories (respectively), nor did it support the experimenter's hypothesis that the majority of respondents would have lied at least once in their online relationships. Furthermore, the results did not completely support the expectation that participants would describe their lies in CMC as more habitual and more serious than the lies they told in real life. While the data showed a higher frequency of dishonesty in CMC, it showed an inconsequential difference in the significance of online and real-life lies.
One must keep in mind that the data presented here has certain limitations; the sample is relatively small and biased to the group of the researcher's friends and acquaintances. However, the survey style allowed the researcher to question a much larger population than her previous interview method; additionally her present population was less biased than the prior, as she included males as respondents. Moreover, the focused scope of this study has led to an insightful set of results.
There were also two methodological flaws in the present study that became apparent during data analysis: the setup of question four, and the clarity of questions six through eight. The given answers to question four were arranged in an order contrary to the rest of the answer sets. While most answer sets were arranged in a logical order from smallest to largest, question four was unusually ordered proceeding from largest to smallest--"Every time I'm online" to "Almost never." The researcher rearranged these answers during data analysis for clarity, but in future studies, this matter should be fixed beforehand. The clarity of questions six through eight also proved to be a fault of the current study. Several participants, although answering that they lied more frequently online than in real life, checked the same answer for the frequency of both their online and real-life lies. A way to remedy this would be to provide more possible choices in the answer set than were previously given, "Never" for example (to view the answer set, see Appendix). If one were to replicate this study, making changes to these few questions would be quite beneficial in the ease of data processing as well as in ensuring the accuracy of results.
Regardless of its limitations, this study has uncovered many interesting facts about honesty in online relationships. An idea for future study that has emerged is a survey examining the relationship between trusting and trustworthiness through CMC. Also, the present study could be replicated with the alterations and improvements listed above. Such studies as these could have very captivating results. |
