A preliminary study of college room-bound male students: Concept exploration and instrument development

Abstract

From time to time, cases of over-dependence on the Internet have been observed on college campuses. Some students, especially male students, remain connected to the Internet as long as they are awake. In Chinese, the emerging term (sic) (chai-nan) is used to describe this kind of young man, meaning "room-bound male," who seldom leaves his residence and stays online with few interruptions. Thus far, the term 'room-bound male' has become a popular component of Taiwan students' slang, society's common conceptions of technology-savvy youths, and media coverage of these youths, but how people, especially college students, exactly perceive room-bound males is still unclear. The purposes of this study are to explore this emerging concept and possible underlying dimensions of room-bound males in the college-campus context, to examine college students' perception of this concept, and to construct an instrument the Image of the Room-bound Male Scale (IRBMS)-for measuring these dimensions. Based on an exploratory factor analysis of 533 valid responses, the results indicate that respondents expressed significantly stronger agreement with the described dimensions of computer activities, social life, and eating habits than with the described dimensions of adult hobbies, clothing styles, and computer use. The results also indicate that female students were in stronger agreement with the statements regarding all six IRBMS dimensions than were male students: and that freshmen and sophomores were in stronger agreement with the statements regarding the dimensions of computer hobbies, social life, and eating habits as well as with the overall IRBMS than were juniors and seniors. Respondents who evaluated themselves as non-room-bound were in greater agreement with the descriptions of the adult-hobbies dimension than were respondents who evaluated themselves as room-bound. Interpretations of these results, future research directions, and implications for educators are discussed. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.