Effective Computer-mediated Communication Using Hypertext
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of variance explained, Cronbach
s
α
= .86).
Comfort with presentation style. Next, an index for measuring participants
level of
comfort with presentation style was created based on four items (58% of variance explained,
Cronbach
s
α
= .78). The questions were the following: "I have previous experience with
the way the information was presented here," "I was able to explore the article freely,"
I
had control over the materials I read,
and "It was easy to read through information in the
way the article was presented."
Initially, correlation tests were conducted among the previously mentioned variables.
As anticipated, disorientation was negatively correlated with the liking of presentation style, r
(201) = -.27, p < .01. Furthermore, the participants
comfort with the presentation style was
strongly correlated with liking of presentation style, r (201) = .71, p < .01, but negatively
correlated with disorientation, r (201) = -.29, p < .01.
Results
General Linear Model (GLM) and an independent samples t-test were used to test the
effects of the different text formats in relation with participants’ adventurousness on format
preference, disorientation, and level of comfort they experienced with the given text format.
Hypotheses about Liking of Presentation Style
There was a main text format effect on the participants
liking of presentation style,
F (2, 201) = 9.8, p < .01. Further analysis revealed that those who read the paged hypertext
(M =50.8, SD=14) or the expanding hypertext (M = 50, SD=15) showed higher scores in
liking of presentation styles than those who read the scrolling text (M = 40.3, SD=15.6)
(Table 1).
H1: Highly adventurous participants who read the paged hypertext (PH) will show
higher scores on liking of presentation style than those who read the scrolling text (ST).
Convention