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Videogames & Stress Level Reduction Among Students
The topic of the study and its importance
Stress belongs among one of the most widespread issues in modern society. Often referred to as a plague of the 21st century, it affects peoples lives in various ways, including their motivation, performance, and psychological well-being. Students of universities and colleges are increasingly exposed to stress, as they have to adjust to new responsibilities, higher workloads, and social expectations. In this context, to deal with stress, students do various recreational activities which include video games. As a relatively new phenomenon, video games became available due to technological advances in recent decades. Their full potential in stress reduction compared to traditional recreation methods is yet to be discovered. This is why this topic draws my genuine interest and attention. Consequently, I will conduct ethnographic research on a chosen college student group to register this methods prevalence and the amount of time it takes compared to other activities.
The information about the area of research
The scholarly attention on video games in terms of mental health improvement further supports my decision. For instance, the study conducted by Villani et al. (2018) confirms the positive effect video games have on stress reduction. Then, it provides a systematic review of video games effectiveness on individual emotion regulation. Another more specified example is the work by Pine et al. (2020) the collective focused on casual videogamings impact on anxiety, depression, and stress and came to promising conclusions. Overall, the studies provide scholarly proven evidence of a positive relationship between video gaming and stress reduction. In this context, I can freely focus on observations without the need to conduct additional supporting research.
The way of conducting the ethnography
In terms of how I will conduct the ethnography, I was motivated by Matthew Desmonds example. According to Ehrenreich (2016), he had to live in a trailer to stay in the proximity of unfolding eviction events. In addition, he devoted a lot of time to not only the everyday routine of evicted people but also attended official court hearings (White, 2016). Analogically, I would like to separate my observations on viewing the students inside and outside the college. While they are at the college, I will primarily focus on whether the students play during their studies and breaks. In addition, I will register how often the topic of video games appears in the conversations. Outside the college, my concern will be centered around leisure preferences. To gain access to the classroom, I might have to ask permission from the teacher. Meanwhile, to observe the students leisure time, I might have to contact students directly. To start developing rapport, I will disclose my scientific purpose as an observer to invoke interest.
Challenges of the research
Among the challenges I might face in this research, I mainly see the need for my direct presence during the observation, which might interfere with the natural settings. However, I believe that my identity will ease the rapport development due to the age overlap with the target population and unbiased attitude toward peoples decisions. Additionally, I intend to keep the details of the research unknown to ensure the naturalness and intrigue the participants even more. The latter can be considered an advantage of being an outsider, which, in my opinion, outvalues the disadvantage of having to build rapport. If I were an insider, I would keep the ability to intrigue and would not have to spend time on building trust. Unfortunately, I would lose the ability to study the closest people objectively.
Limitations of the ethnographic approach
Nevertheless, despite all possible efforts, the ethnographic approach bears several limitations that are hard to overcome. According to Conerly (2021), ethnography is the immersion of the researcher in the natural setting of an entire social community to observe and experience their everyday life and culture (48). Thus, regardless of the effort I put into building rapport, I might still affect the peoples decision to perform some activities through my presence. Second, my research will be limited in terms of target population numbers. In other words, the results yielded by one particular group of students might significantly differ from other student groups.
Finally, the data validity will strongly depend on the amount of time I can spend with the chosen group. As with any observational study, ethnography requires a prolonged observation the longer the time, the more reliable the results will be.
Works Cited
Conerly, Tonja R et al. Introduction to Sociology. 3rd ed., Openstax, 2021.
Ehrenreich, Barbara. Matthew Desmonds Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. The New York Times, 2016, Web.
Pine, Russell, et al. The effects of casual videogames on anxiety, depression, stress, and low mood: a systematic review. Games for health journal, vol. 9, no. 4, 2020, pp. 255-264.
Villani, Daniela, et al. Videogames for emotion regulation: a systematic review. Games for health journal, vol. 7, no. 2, 2018, pp. 85-99.
White, Gillian B. Americas Insidious Eviction Problem. The Atlantic, Web.
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