For my Upper division Applied Research Communication course, I worked on a semester long research project in a team of four. Our team did an applied research study and report on chosen topic: the study of students’ reaction to social media background checks by prospective employers.
We started by creating our research question. Subsequently, we studied our target population and collected information from the selected group. We finished our study on qualitative research with the support of several qualitative research techniques. We conducted both asynchronous and synchronous interviews, as well as individual and group sessions. We gathered information on the primary population, the SFU upper division students, by performing interviews using different techniques. The research was carried out over about three months during the Fall 2013 SFU term, with interviews occurring over a two-week period.
The invention of participatory social media sites has opened a sea of possibilities for users to freely express themselves by creating online personas. Unfortunately, there are possible negative implications to the free use of social media sites, one of them being the possibility of getting rejected in a job application due to the content posted on such sites. As students are graduating and entering the job market they are faced with the need to alter their social media profiles in order to cater to social media background checks performed my employers. This study analyzes the reaction SFU upper division students have towards this issue and if they have any change in behavior towards their final years of study.
© Kenneth Lee
