How to measure sessions of mobile phone use? Quantification, evaluation, and applications. (May 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zhu, Jonathan J. H.; Chen, Hexin; Peng, Tai-Quan; Liu, Xiao Fan; Dai, Haixing
• Other Names: Boase Jeffrey guest-editor.; Humphreys Lee guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Mobile media & communication. Volume 6:Number 2(2018)
• Page Start: 215
• Page End: 232
• Publication Date: 2018-05
• Subjects: community detection -- equal-length time measure -- mobile phone use -- temporal user behavior -- variable-length time measure; Mobile communication systems -- Periodicals; 384.53
• DOI: 10.1177/2050157917748351
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2050-1579

Abstract

Research on mobile phone use often starts with the question of how much time users spend using their phones. The question involves an equal-length measure that captures the duration of mobile phone use but does not tackle the other temporal characteristics of user behavior, such as frequency, timing, and sequence . In this study, we propose a variable-length measure called "session" to uncover the unmeasured temporal characteristics. We use an open source dataset to demonstrate how to quantify sessions, aggregate the sessions to higher units of analysis within and across users, evaluate the results, and apply the measure for theoretical or practical purposes.