Menthal

Smartphones are becoming increasingly important in our lives and accompany us almost everywhere. It has thus become possible to ask the device for directions, check email, spend time playing video games or simply surf the Internet.

In the following study we would like to scientifically assess, how often people are actually using their mobile phones. When do we go online for the first time a day, when do we first check for new email and when do we receive the first call? Additionally, it is the aim of the study to find out how differences in smartphone usage can be explained. In this context we would like to take into account classic self-report inventories from personality psychology (e.g. recording the self-perceived anxiety or sociability). More specifically, the phone shall ask questions from short versions of scales for personality assessment from personality psychology (e.g. "I am anxious" with possible answers ranging from "agree strongly" to "disagree strongly").

These single items will appear on the screen to very manageable extent (not more than one item per day). You can, of course, dismiss the request.

Because your smartphone contains very private information, we would like to explain, what information the software stores and which it does not. It does not record any personal content from emails, SMS or chat messengers (e.g. WhatsApp). Of course it does not record, what internet addresses you visit or with whom you are talking over the phone. We are interested in quantitative variables - how long are you online per day, when do you look on the phone for the last time in the evening and how big is your social network (how many different phone numbers are there, but not what phone numbers are in your phone book)? Quantitatively, this means further, that content or email with regard to the size of your vocabulary can be assessed and be sent to our servers (e.g. vocabulary is made up of 3430 words). Again: it is not possible to gain any knowledge about the original email's content from this information. Subsequently, we elucidate what information we record, what the study's design looks like and how we secure your data.

Please refer to the details of this on https://menthal.iai.uni-bonn.de/terms .

</br>