Enfoque étnico y de género

This section examines the responses of parents to some of the collaborative and interactive mechanisms offered by the PChCT tool. However, because the only information about the PChCT resources is from the video demonstration, we are being careful to avoid questioning parents about the concepts beneath the collaborative and interactive resources. For instance, to select, use and feel the possible benefits of the activity-aware service, it might be essential to have technical information such as awareness areas and distances, information that only lasts for about one minute in the video presentation, and we are not sure that parents were able to grasp it. We restrict ourselves, therefore, to asking about the usefulness and overall availability of these tool features.

PChCT’s collaboration (G4)

To explore the acceptance of the PChCT‘s collaborative features we included questions about the space and events interfaces, and whether these might help parents to trust the tool.

Figure 6.10 shows the distribution of responses given to this category. We can observe that there are very few ―Strongly agree‖ responses, and that overall less than 50% of the responses are positive.

Figure 6.10 Score densities for the “PChCT collaboration” category

It seems that parents were not certain whether the PChCT‘s features might help with

parental tasks. Is it an effect of the lack of hands-on experience? Are people often hesitant about giving an opinion about something that is not familiar to them? Did

the video demonstration fail to engage people with the PChCT‘s resources?

Table 6-10 shows basic statistics to explore overall attitudes and ―troublesome‖ questions within this category. We observe that question T, ―Continuous monitoring is something I would use most of the time”, despite of having some ―Strongly agree‖ responses, seems to contribute significantly to the lower scores, and to a lesser extent question Q, “All of the available collaborative characteristics can make me trust the

tool”. However, in general we can see a high proportion of ―Undecided‖ responses

across all the questions.

parents might find it difficult to decide whether a monitoring tool is useful if they have not tested it, or possibly are uncertain whether the tool meet all of their needs for childcare support.

From a different perspective, we might argue that the words ―monitoring‖ and

―supervising‖ may have been perceived in particular ways; e.g. 24 hour surveillance.

If so, then we might explain the negative responses to questions K and T. Of course, if parents cannot identify the PChCT‘s usefulness then we cannot expect them to trust the tool (question Q).

ID Question/measure Mean Var SD SDA DA UN AG SAG

J Collaborative features help to look after children

3.5 0.4736 0.6882 0% 10% 30% 60% 0%

K Collaborative services meet what is needed to supervise

children

3.2 0.6947 0.8335 0% 20% 45% 30% 5%

Q Because of the collaborative features I can trust PChCT

3.25 0.6184 0.7863 5% 5% 50% 40% 0%

T I would use PChCT for

continuous monitoring

3.2 1.1157 1.0563 5% 20% 35% 30% 10%

Table 6-10 Responses variability for the “PChCT collaboration” category

One way to paraphrase the apparent response to the PChCT might be:

Although as a parent I have no experience with the PChCT, it seems that there are some features that might help with the monitoring of children‘s activity, however I am not sure whether these meet my needs, and in any case it is not really ―surveillance‖.

When reviewing responses according to the children‘s age groups (figure 6.11), we

can observe that parents with children in the ―two-to-three‖ and ―four and over‖ groups returned the most negative responses, but the one-to-two group was the most

uncertain overall; 66% of the responses in this group were ―undecided‖. The group

four-and-over appears to be the least engaged by the PChCT‘s features: 50% of the

responses broadly disagree with the usefulness of the tool‘s resources.

Although we note that the sample size for the group four-and-over is very small, we might ask again whether or not attitudes to the PChCT features might be associated with the stage of the child development; we return to this question in section 6.4. We close the analysis of this group by presenting responses of two parents to the open question of the questionnaire:

“Seems useful but not all the time…”

“Undecided about use… feels a bit big-brotherish.”

Figure 6.11 Responses to “PChCT collaborative” by child’s age group

PChCT’s interaction (G5)

Within this group of questions we explore some of the PChCT‘s features that take into account the user‘s participation. These include facilities that the user can configure to determine the level of collaboration given by the system. For instance, the ―awareness artefacts‖ section allows the user to select which augmented artefacts of which the user wishes to be aware. As in the previous section we bear in mind that

parents‘ experience with the PChCT is limited. We therefore limit our analysis to

two questions that refer to the availability of the resources within the user profile interface that allow the user to adapt the system‘s collaboration and to request the

Figure 6.12 shows the distribution of responses for group G5. We observe that there

is ―broad agreement‖ in this category, with 25% of the scores ―Undecided‖.

Table 6-11 shows that question V, “The request for the room‟s picture is easy to

understand”, is more highly scored than question U, “I like it that the system allows

me to change the configuration of the awareness levels”. These two questions explore how easy (and desirable) parents might find the use of these two interactive resources. We observe that the perceptions of parents for both facilities are very similar.

ID Question/measure Mean Var SD SDA DA UN AG SAG

U Interactive mechanism to control aware activity reporting

3.80 0.3789 0.6155 0% 0% 30% 60% 10%

V Easy interaction to upload the

room‘s picture 3.95 0.3657 0.6048 0% 0% 20% 65% 15%

Table 6-11 Responses variability for the “PChCT interactive” category

Again, for the uncertain scores, we could argue that these may be associated with the absence of a hands-on experience. Responses grouped according to children‘s age groups in figure 6.13, show that the group four-and-over completely agrees with the usability of these PChCT resources whereas the opinions of other groups are divided. One possibility might be that if children are fully developed and aware of dangers around them then parents might be especially interested in controlling the system‘s collaboration. However, why do the other groups express some doubts about these PChCT‘s features?

Figure 6.13 Responses to “PChCT interactive” by child’s age group

The group sizes and the number of questions within this category are two factors constraining our observations, but it is possible that the child‘s age and development

might also influence responses to this category; discussion of which is reserved for section 6.4.