A Study on Mobile Phone Usage by the University Students in Oman

Abstract

Mobile phones is playing an incredible role in the hands of the younger generation and becoming an integral part of survival, even some have even gone to the extent of saying that they would rather survive without food for a day than without their mobile phones. Mobile phones are both a curse and a boon to the newer generation as phones are being primarily used for education and entertainment purposes; it also inculcates a lot of ill habits in the younger generation. The purpose of this research is to understand the usage of mobile phones for academic, personal and other reasons by the students of university in Oman. To shed light on the nature and sensitivity of the mobile phone usage on students and its effect on them. The main objective of the research is to understand the perceptions and effects of mobile phone usage by the University students in Oman. The outcomes of the study will be beneficial for students and university administrators for improving existing mobile phone usage to be more effective for the benefit of University students. The research is descriptive and structured questionnaire is administered through google forms for collecting the primary data. The Population is 796 including all the levels of students in business department (i.e Diploma, Advanced diploma and B.tech). The sample size is 266 with (95% confidence level). Stratified convenient sampling method is used to collect data from the students of business department at University in Oman. As the data collected is not normally distributed, so Non- Parametric tests like Man Whitney-U-test and Kruskal wallis test is used for testing the hypothesis. Findings revealed that there is a difference of opinion among respondents on gender and time spent towards Perception, hindrance factors and the effect of the mobile phone on students learning activities. Future research can be extended to factors like social and family related issues to get a better idea about the research. Further it can also be extended to schools in Oman to know the students basic understanding and usage of mobile phone and its impact on them.