Social Media Usage and Self-perception of Popularity

Results
Our survey has collected 35 responses from college students on OSU campus, with
66% of the respondents being female, and 34% of respondents being male. The sample
has a majority of samples falling into the age range of 18-24 (91% out of the 35
respondents), and 6% of the respondents age 24-44 years old. The major of our
respondents are from School of Arts and Science (16 out of 33, which is 48%), followed
by 9 out of 33 (27%) studying in Fisher College, 4 out of 33 (12%) in Engineering, 2 out
of 33 (6%) in Education, 1 out of 33 (3%) in Architecture, 1 out of 33 (3%) in Medicine.
The survey focused on the social media usage and the personality of college
students. Among our 35 respondents, more than 80% have at least 3 social media account
and about 94% of them use social media daily. When asking about the differences of their
behavior online and in life, the results distributed evenly by letting the respondents
answer yes or no. On a scale of 5 (1 as strongly disagree and 5 as strongly agree), we
also let our respondents answered whether they agree or disagree on several statements
that describe personality. For the statement of I am a talkative person, the mean is 3.54;
for I get along with others the mean is 3.80; for I feel good when everyones attention
is on me, the mean is 3.37.

The two charts displayed above show the data collected from two survey questions
that reflected our IV and DV most. Both graphs are skewed to the left which means that
the mean is less than the median. The mean for graph L (graph on the left) and graph R
(graph on the right) are 5.97 and 3.71 respectively. The medians for graph L and graph R
are 7 and 4 respectively. The mode is the same as the median for both graph L and graph
R. The standard deviation of the data of Graph L and Graph R is 2.39 and .710. The data
or both graphs entailed 35 respondents.
Graph L consists with the question do you think social media is important to you.
Respondents answered the question on a zero to ten scale. Not thinking social media was
important fell on the lower end of the scale and thinking social media was important fell
on the higher end of the scale. Because the mode of our data was 7 and the highest peaks

Social Media Usage and Self-perception of Popularity

fell between 6 and 8 we can infer from our data that most college students find social
media somewhat important. From this conclusion one can say that if the OSU college
students find social media somewhat important, then their perception of popularity may
be influenced by social media.
Graph R is from the question do you agree or disagree with the following
statement: I am a confident person. The respondents could have chosen disagree, neither
agree or disagree, agree, or strongly disagree. The majority of the respondents answered
the question by choosing agree.
Correlations
As stated above, our independent variable for this research is a college students
usage of her/his social media account, and the dependent variable is this persons selfperception of popularity. After running the data of the variables in SPSS, we actually
found something unexpected. Our group first tried several time to run single variables to
find correlations between those ones. For example, when using the importance level of
using social media as the one to indicate the level of our independent variable, and using
the statement of I am a confident person as the one to indicate the level of our
dependent variable, the correlation between the two is extremely insignificant (R=-.074,
DF=33, P-value=.672). Below is the chart of the output from SPSS:
Correlations
Do you think social
media is important to you?
(indicate the level of
importance on the scale
bel...-Not at all important
Do you think social
media is important to you?
(indicate the level of
importance on the scale
bel...-Not at all important

Pearson
Correlation
Sig.
tailed)

(2-

N
Do you agree or
disagree with the following
statement: -I am confident
person

Do you agree or
disagree with the
following statement:
-I
am
confident
person
-.074
.672

35

35

Pearson
Correlation

-.074

Sig.
tailed)

.672

(2-

35

35

We also tried to find relationships between variables such as the frequency of social
media usage and the statement of self-perception. Unfortunately, none of them can
demonstrate us any significant relationship.
By combining the social media usage questions, we came up with a new variable
called Social Media Use, we sum up all the results of each variables that we think can
indicate ones social media usage or the addiction level of social media. Additionally,
another new variable was created by summing up the results of each positive statements

Social Media Usage and Self-perception of Popularity

and taking out the results of each negative statements (mostly under the self-perception
statements question) that we think can indicate ones self-perception of popularity level
and we named it Self Perception Popularity. After the two new variables are created,
we run the correlation between the two new variables, and below is the table:
R=-0.068, DF=33, P-value=.696
Correlations

SocialMediaUse

Pearson
Correlation
Sig.
tailed)

Pearson
Correlation
Sig.
tailed)
N

SelfPerceptionPopularity

-.068

(2-

N
SelfPerceptionPopularity

SocialMediaUse

(2-

.696
35

35

-.068

.696

35

35

From the correlation table, we conclude that theres no correlation between social
media use and a persons self-perception of his/her popularity.
However, there are some interesting findings of the relationship between the
personality of a person and his/her social media use. For example, in question #15 we
asked about if a person acts the same when he/her is interacting with others. For those
who selected yes have larger means than those who selected no when asking if they
are talkative (m=3.83), get along with others (m=3.83), or feel good when attention is on
them (m=3.61), and have smaller means than those who selected no when asking if
they are shy (m=2.5). Although the sample size is small, we can still see a minor
difference of the personality between respondents who heavily rely on social media, and
those who do not.
Discussion
The conclusion turns out to be contrast with our original hypothesis. From what we
gathered on this topic and based on our common sense, we thought there was a
relationship between a persons personality and his/her social media usage, but the survey
results in none.
After evaluating our survey, we think there were still several elements that
determined and influenced our results. First of all, our group collected a sample size of 35
college students, which is relatively small for getting a result that is accurate enough to
conclude our research question. Secondly, an important part of our problem is the
wording of our question. Our group thinks that with better questionnaires we may be able
to get better results. There are several questions that needs to be rephrased to get answers

Social Media Usage and Self-perception of Popularity

that are less bias. For example, for the question of ones personality, there are statements
states that I am popular. Although it is closely related to our research question, which
can reflect the self-perception of popularity of our respondents, most of them responded
Neither Agree nor Disagree. This non-attitude gave us a hard time to find relationship
between the independent variable and dependent variable in our research question. It is
important for us to improve our survey to contain more easy-answered and direct
questions, and to avoid vague, confused questions.