Method
For our study, we targeted current students at DePaul University in Chicago, IL. To measure our hypotheses, we created a 10 question online survey with the help of surveymonkey.com. The survey consisted of four personal questions, gender, major, year in school, GPA, along with six questions about personal textbook obtainment habits. Every question on the survey was required for the participant to answer, except for their GPA.
We conducted a pilot study in our HCI 201 class on Tuesday, April 24, 2012. The participants that completed this pilot study were in our class, five male and two female. From this pilot study, we learned to what extent students were able to fill out the survey. We also saw the basic preferences people had about obtaining their textbooks for classes. We ended up changing the GPA question to an 'optional' answer because it did not directly correspond to our hypotheses, but we kept it in there just to see if any significant correlations arose in the planned survey.
For the planned survey, we used a convenience sampling. We posted a link to our survey online via Facebook, Twitter, and email to gather responses from our friends and colleagues. Once the participant has voluntarily chosen to take the survey, they were prompted with an informed consent script explaining their participation in the study. This briefed them about the general aspects of the survey as well as provided contact information in case they have any questions. There was no penalty for backing out of the study and participant anonymity was expressed. Overall, we collected a total of 94 participant surveys at the end of our collection period.