Since the COVID-19 pandemic, many researchers turned to remote testing to continue to collect data. This shift provided new insights and exciting opportunities for researchers, including the ability to gain access to larger demographic pools. However, remote work has come with unique challenges. One factor that has proved to be challenging is the level of control researchers have when conducting remote studies. For example, compared to in-lab room setup and design, participants' home environments have numerous distractions for young toddlers (e.g., family members, pets, tv, toys). Thus, the increased variability has led to important questions regarding methodology, implementation, and in the current study, variability in participation. That is, are there systematic biases in final samples due to differences in participant characteristics, such as temperament? Particularly for remote work, the increased variability has created challenges for researchers to collect data but also exciting opportunities to understand how temperament may interact with participation and study completion rates. The current study aimed to understand whether temperament plays a role in study completion rates in remote research for toddlers ages 18 and 24 months. It was expected that effortful control would significantly influence participation and study completion, and that both negative affectivity and surgency would negatively influence participation in the remote study. Both effortful control and negative affectivity were not significantly related to participation, while surgency positively related to participation. / Doctor of Philosophy / Since the pandemic, many developmental researchers shifted from in-person settings to online testing. Although remote testing is not new, this shift provided many research labs with new opportunities to reach more participants. However, with this shift to remote testing, researchers relinquished control that has been designed in the lab, in that each home environment is different. For example, noise, internet speed, and computer size will vary across participants, whereas in the laboratory, these factors remained constant. Moreover, toys, tvs, pets, and/or siblings may be distracting for toddlers participating in a remote study. Thus, these differences across home environments have illuminated differences in toddlers' successful participation. For example, are some toddlers more likely to maintain their attention to the current task? Temperament was investigated in the current study to determine if certain skills may influence study participation and completion rates for toddlers ages 18 to 24-months. It was expected that effortful control (e.g., inhibitory control, attention focusing) would significantly influence the likelihood of a toddler completing the remote task. On the other hand, it was expected that both surgency (e.g., impulsivity, activity level) and negative affectivity (e.g., fear, shyness) would negatively influence task participation. Only surgency positively influenced task participation, and will be discussed in the context of toddler motivation, and engagement in the task.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/115514 |
| Date | 26 June 2023 |
| Creators | Taylor, Caroline Hamilton |
| Contributors | Psychology, Panneton, Robin K., Choi, Koeun, Kim-Spoon, Jungmeen, Bell, Martha Ann |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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