Many studies examining social media use rely on self-report survey questions about how much time participants spend on social media platforms. Because they are challenging to answer accurately and susceptible to various biases, these selfreported measures are known to contain error -although the specific contours of this error are not well understood. This paper compares data from ten self-reported Facebook use survey measures deployed in 15 countries (N = 49,934) against data from Facebook's server logs to describe factors associated with error in commonly used survey items from the literature. Self-reports were moderately correlated with actual Facebook use (r = 0.42 for the best-performing question), though participants significantly overestimated how much time they spent on Facebook and underestimated the number of times they visited. People who spent a lot of time on the platform were more likely to misreport their time, as were teens and younger adults, which is notable because of the high reliance on college-aged samples in many fields. We conclude with recommendations on the most accurate ways to collect time-spent data via surveys.
Virtual teams have become a ubiquitous form of organizing, but the impact of social structures within and between teams on group performance remains understudied. This paper uses the case study of a massively multiplayer online game and server log data from over 10,000 players to examine the connection between group social capital (operationalized through guild network structure measures) and team effectiveness, given a variety of in-game social networks. Three different networks, social, task, and exchange networks, are compared and contrasted while controlling for group size, group age, and player experience. Team effectiveness is maximized at a roughly moderate level of closure across the networks, suggesting that this is the optimal level of the group's network density. Guilds with high brokerage, meaning they have diverse connections with other groups, were more effective in achievement-oriented networks. In addition, guilds with central leaders were more effective when they teamed up with other guild leaders.
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