| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
When trying to correctly qualify—or quantify—if there is an effect of home Internet access on student academic standing, other factors must be taken into consideration. Schield advises the consideration of three explanations of the factors being considered to explain a phenomenon:
To determine if there is an association of Internet access at home and academic standing, other factors need to be included in the research design. The research design should determine differences and potential interactions among factors such as Internet access at home, family affluence, and academic achievement. Applying these three tests to the design of the study can lead to the following statements:
- 1. The presence of Internet access in the home causes a higher test score;
- 2. Higher test scores cause the presence of the Internet at home; or
- 3. Other factors such as family affluence (family income, parents level of education), explain both differences in academic standing and the presence of Internet access at home.
Each of these three explanations, patterned after Schields’explanations, has potential and supporting arguments with varied degrees of merit or legitimacy. To declare that the presence of Internet access at home is the sole cause of academic standing is to deny all other potential mitigating factors. The second explanation could be that the students with greater academic standing place a higher value on the use of computers and Internet access, and have therefore manipulated their environment to include that resource in their home.