Smartphone Usage, Gratifications, and Addiction: A Mixed-Methods Research

Abstract

Combining a survey and focus groups as a mixed-methods research, the authors of this chapter examined the functions, types, and motivations of smartphone usage and gratifications. Furthermore, the authors also investigated the rates, symptoms, and reasons of smartphone addiction. Still another achievement of the authors was to look into the relationship between smartphone usage, gratifications, and addiction with academic achievements among college students. On top of identifying three levels of addiction, the authors also located distinctive traits of these levels. This chapter provided an interesting example of how mixed-methods research can be employed to investigate mobile use, gratifications, and addiction. It is expected from the editor that this chapter would lead to more comparative studies between or among countries or cultures using by using a mixed-methods research to triangulate and/or complement findings of using different research methods. The inclusion of this chapter in this volume is also meant to invite further studies to investigate the gap between what mobile users want and what they actually get from using mobile as well as its related experience on both the normative and the empirical sides.