Undergraduate students Ashley Coombs, Victoria Carter, Liliana Lopez, and Jessy Salas are replicating Study 1 in the Forest & Wood (2012) social networking study for our Psychological Research Methods course at Utah Valley University under Dr. Russell T. Warne. We chose to replicate this study due to the prevalence of social networking, and our interest in its relationship with self-esteem.
We are aiming to achieve a sample size of 80 - 150 participants. We are targeting college students over the age of 18, and we are also aiming to achieve an equal distribution of males and females, though participants have the option to not disclose gender. We are conducting a direct replication, though some additional questions are asked in the survey, such as age, sex, and whether or not the participant is a college student. However, these are not variables that will be tested in addition to the Facebook usage and self-esteem data, and they are only included to ensure participants fit our target demographics.
Participants will be recruited online through scripted posts on the researchers' personal social media platforms with links to the survey, which will be administered anonymously on Qualtrics.