Statistical Analysis of Turkish Speaking Students’ Phubbing Behaviors

As spending considerable time on Smart Phones has nearly become a norm, people ignoring other people around them in social environments, increased remarkably over the past decade. People being exposed to phubbing behaviors by their companions, looking at their phones repeatedly in social settings are feeling ignored. In this study, after an extensive literature review, data were collected from 352 participants via SurveyMonkey software regarding their perceptions about phubbing and being phubbed. The aim of this study is to find differences between Turkish Speaking Students’ Phubbing Behaviors according to education, job status, working status and gender. Statistical analysis showed that, all participants stated ‚they get rid of their stress by interacting with their phones‛, though they do not mean to irritate others by focusing on their phones. Results also revealed that, Working participants are phubbed more compared to the Not Working and Retired participants.


Introduction
In the recent years, increased dependency on smartphones resulted in people engaging with their smartphones even while having a face-to-face conversation with others; a behavior commonly known in the literature as phubbing (Coehoorn, 2014). The person engaging with a smartphone instead of paying attention to another person or persons during a social interaction is called a ‚phubber,‛ while the person who is being phubbed, that is, phone snubbed, during the social interaction is called the ‚phubbee‛ (Chotpitayasunondh & Douglas, 2016). Mostly the number of hours in a day when we have virtual communication via our Smartphones is more than the number of hours when we have face to face chats.
Studies have shown that phubbing behavior negatively affected satisfaction and fulfillment obtained from the relationship between partners (Chotpitayasunondh & Douglas, 2018;Gonza´lezRivera, Segura-Abreu, & Urbistondo-Rodrı´guez, 2018). Another negative effect of phubbing is reported in work life. Employees who stated that bosses paid attention to their phones during communication said they felt the work they did is not valued and selfconfidence about efficacy related to work reduced (David & Roberts, 2017). It is understood from studies that there are negative reflections of phubbing in educational life just as in family and work life.
Emotional support from social media is positively related to college students' phubbing behavior ( Fanga,et.al, 2020). What is more, fear of missing out and problematic social media use could sequentially mediate the relationship between emotional support from social media and college students' phubbing behavior (Ozer, 2020;Fanga,et.al, 2020).
Other findings obtaining similar results revealed that phubbing is commonly observed and is a responsible behavior from the student perspective (Ugur & Koc, 2015). Wang, Xie, Wang, Wang, and Lei (2017) examined outcomes of phubbing and determined that phubbing may be related to depression and reduced fulfillment in relationships. Roberts and David (2016) identified that partners with anxious attachment style displayed more confrontational reactions when exposed to phubbing. Chasombat (2015) identified that those displaying phubbing behavior had reduced listening skills.
Research carried out by Göksu & Bolat (2020) stated that there is no significant difference in the effect of technology on academic achievement in terms of field/course and technologybased learning environments based on learning theories. The most careful observers and most addopted ones of technology are students (Tuncay, 2016). Students provide us valuable information about technology addiction, game addiction and phubbig behaviours.
They found that there is no significant relationship between the factors such as responsibility, extraversion, and agreeableness, but it is stated that there is a need for further research in order to determine which personality traits influence phubbing. Before proceeding to the method part, hypothesis based on work should be indicated if there is an objective to investigate absolutely.

Problem and Research Design
Ignoring and being ignored by others in favor of a smartphone is a common feature of everyday communication. As a result of detailed literature review it is seen that:  Smartphones and SmartPhone Addicion has been interest of many reseachers (Pendergrass & Town, 2017;Hassanzadeh & Rezaei, 2011;Tao et al., 2010 All these were motives for the researchers to deliver a research study in North Cyprus students to find out the situation of Phubbing Behaviours and to suggest solutions for these. Quantitative research design was used for this study. The purpose of this study is to find differences between Turkish Speaking Students' Phubbing Behaviors according to education, job status, working status and gender.

Materials
After extensive literature survey, a questionnaire including three main parts, is designed. The first part includes demographic questions. The second and third parts include Generic Scale of Phubbing (GSP) and the Generic Scale of Being Phubbed (GSBP). GSP is used to assess phubbing behavior, and the GSBP is used to assess the experience of being phubbed.

Journal of Computer and Education Research
Year 2020  The four-factor 15-item GSP and the three-factor 22-item GSBP were developed and revealed good construct validities, criterion validities, convergent validities, discriminant validities, internal consistency reliabilities, and test-retest reliabilities (Chotpitayasunondh & Douglas, 2018). The above-mentioned four factors of GSP scale includes; Nomophobia, Interpersonal Conflict, Self Isolation and Problem Acknowledgement; and the three factor GSBP scale includes; Perceived Norms, Feeling Ignored and Interpersonal Conflict (Chotpitayasunondh and Douglas, 2018).
The questionnaire written in Survey Monkey (see Figure 1) was initially distributed to experts for them to express their opinion. After making modifications according to their responses, a pilot study was carried out by distributing the questionnaires to small sample of fifty participants. After the making the final adjustments, and obtaining authorizations from related schools, the questionnaire was sent to over 500 Turkish speaking (Turkish and Turkish Cypriot) participants between October 2018 and February 2019.

Population
Over 500 online questionnaires were shared, via e-mail, WhatsApp and Messsenger Messages, after obtaining the authorization from schools. Participants who were below the age of 18 responded under their parent's or guardian's supervision. Turkish speaking

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Students who are overinteracting with mobile phones were preferred to be participants of this study, however their being involved/ not being involved is a volunteer status. Aim of this research was explained to them it would take only their 10 minutes and it is ensured that the data will not be used other than research purposes. Only 352 students filled in the online questionnaires during the 4 months.

Phubber and Phubbee Statistics According to Ages
According to Figure 2, the tendency of phubbing behavior generally decreases as the age increases but above the age of 54 there is a significant increase in phubbing behavior.

Phubbee-Phubber and Education Statistics
Phubbee-Phubber and Education Statistics are shown in Figure 3. Here, graduate school and primary school statistics are observed to be higher than Undergraduate and Secondary School statistics.

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It is observed that the working participants are phubbed more, when compared to the Not Working and Retired participants. Are working students using Smartphones more than retired students? Is this difference related with age? Further research is required to analyze the reasons of those behaviors. We have discussed Phubber and Phubbee age, working and educational statistics. We will explore independent t-test results and mean in the following sections.

The Generic Scale of Phubbing Statistics
Four factors of Nomophobia, Interpersonal Conflict, Self Isolation and Problem Acknowledgement, the Generic Scale of Phubbing, were analyzed in IBM SPSS Statistics 25.
Following descriptive statistics were obtained as a result of the analysis: Male and female participants showed different aspects of Nomophobia factor. Female participants (above 80%) stated that they could not stand leaving their phone alone, whereas male participants (above 90%) stated that they place their phones where they can see it. Regarding Interpersonal Conflict factor, male participants (above 80%) stated that people tell them that they interact with their phones too much and they get irritated when others ask them to get off their phone to talk to them. Also, regarding Self-Isolation factor, all participants(female above 90%, male above 70%) stated that they get rid of their stress when paying attention to their phones. On the other hand, all participants (female less than 12%, male less than 16%) stated that they don't feel content when they are paying attention to their phone instead of others.

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Regarding Problem Acknowledgement factor, Female participants (above 88%) admited that they find themselves thinking ‚just a few more minutes‛ when they are using their phones. Three factors of Perceived Norms, Feeling Ignored and Interpersonal Conflict According to the Generic Scale of Being Phubbed Statistics, were analyzed in IBM SPSS Statistics 25, and the following descriptive statistics were obtained as shown in Table 2. Also, regarding Perceived Norm factor, female participants (above 80%) stated that they believe others have difficulty in putting their phones down and they are 'in their own world'.
Regarding Feeling Ignored factor, female participants (above 86%) stated that others shift their attention to their phones instead of the person in front of them. Also, regarding Interpersonal Conflict factor, female participants (above 80%) and male participants (above 56%) stated that they have conflicts with others because they are using their phones. On the other hand, less than 20% of the participants stated that they think others use their phones even though they know it irritates the person in front of them.

The Generic Scale of Being Phubbed Statistics
According to the Generic Scale of Being Phubbed Statistics, as shown in Table 3, all factors of Perceived Norms, Feeling Ignored and Interpersonal Conflict differences are observed in the following;  Others seem worried that they will miss something important if they do not check their phones.
 Others seem like they have a difficult time putting their phones down.
 Others seem like they cannot stand leaving their phones alone.
 Others seem like they are ‚in their own worlds‛ using their phones.
 Others seem anxious if their phones are not nearby.
 Others seem like they get rid of boredom by paying attention to their phones instead of me.
 Others shift their attention from me to their phones  I have conflicts with others because they are using their phones. According to the analysis the following results are obtained; In the analysis of Phubbing, There is a significant difference between Female Participants (M=3.94, SD=1.73) and Male Participants (M=3.48, SD=1.78) who said ‚I find myself thinking ‚just a few more minutes" when I am using my phone.‛ and this difference is statistically meaningful. This finding could imply that female paricipants acknowledge the problem of finding themselves using their phones longer than they intend to, when compared to male participants.

Independent t-test Results between Male and Female
The shaded items shown in Table 2 and Table 3 show the significant differences between male and female participants . The details of the analysis are shown in Table 4.
According to the Generic Scale of Phubbing Statistics, as shown in Table 2, all factors of Nomophobia, Interpersonal Conflict, Self Isolation and Problem Acknowledgement, differences are observed in the following;  I cannot stand leaving my phone alone.
 I place my phone where I can see it.
 I have conflicts with others because I am using my phone.
 People tell me that I interact with my phone too much.
 I get irritated if others ask me to get off my phone and talk to them.  I find myself thinking ‚just a few more minutes‛ when I am using my phone. It is found that for Phubber items (2,3,4,5,6,7,12,15) and Phubbee items (4,6,7,8,9,12,19,19) in the Scale is no significant difference between female and male students Phubbing Behaviors (p<0.05) and H0 is rejected in favor of H1. What is more, in total of two scales Phubbing Beavior scores showed significant difference between female and male students. Hence H0 rejected in favour of H1 for this research study.
There is a significant difference between Female Participants (M=5.13, SD=1.43) and

Conclusion and Recommendation
Responses of the participants in GSP and GSBP Scales regarding Self-Isolation and Feeling Ignored Factors, consistently show that the participants do not feel content when themselves or others pay attention to their phones instead of having interaction with eachother. Smartphone usage time is positively related with phubber and as it is also positively related with nomophobia, there could be trainings regarding effective and efficient usage of smartphones (Toker & Tuncay, 2020). More multidisciplinary researches with mind and body research studies as mentioned by Aydın & Bulut( 2012) are required. According to the result of the analysis, all participants seemed to get rid of their stress by interacting with their phones, though they do not mean to irritate others by focusing on their phones. Stress is an unavoidable part of our educational life as well as our social life and it is a fact that we have to learn how to cope with it .
According to the Generic Scale of Phubbing Statistics, as shown in Table 2, all factors of Nomophobia, Interpersonal Conflict, Self Isolation and Problem Acknowledgement, differences are observed in the following;  I cannot stand leaving my phone alone.
 I place my phone where I can see it.
 I have conflicts with others because I am using my phone.
 People tell me that I interact with my phone too much.
 I get irritated if others ask me to get off my phone and talk to them.  I find myself thinking ‚just a few more minutes‛ when I am using my phone.
According to the Generic Scale of Being Phubbed Statistics, as shown in Table 3, all factors of Perceived Norms, Feeling Ignored and Interpersonal Conflict differences are observed in the following;  Others seem worried that they will miss something important if they do not check their phones.
 Others seem like they have a difficult time putting their phones down.
 Others seem like they cannot stand leaving their phones alone.
 Others seem like they are ‚in their own worlds‛ using their phones.
 Others seem anxious if their phones are not nearby.
 Others seem like they get rid of boredom by paying attention to their phones instead of me.
 Others shift their attention from me to their phones  I have conflicts with others because they are using their phones.
In order to provide new directions for further studies in this research area, it is suggested to deliver a multicultural and multidisciplinary study with a larger population of participants.

Acknowledgement
The data used in this study was confirmed by the researchers that it belongs to the years before 2020.