GENDER DIFFERENCES IN THE MOTIVES OF USING ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKS BY UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
GENDER DIFFERENCES IN THE MOTIVES OF USING ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKS BY UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Summary/Abstract: Recent studies show that university students are frequently using the online social networks (OSN) in order to get new information about friends, courses and university events, to maintain relationships with old colleagues or to search new friends. All these motives may differ depending on the gender of students. By understanding gender differences in students' motives to use social networks, teachers will know how to better encourage and improve the learning activities of students, by using the various tools offered by the OSNs. Facebook is one of the fastest growing online social networks, with more than 8 million Romanian users in 2016. This paper investigates the motives of its use and variations across gender. A total of 225 students from a Romanian university took part in this study. This research has two main objectives: (a) to analyze the measurement invariance across gender and (b) to analyze the gender differences along three dimensions: extending the social relations, information & collaboration and maintaining the social relations and. A Multi-Group Confirmatory Factor Analysis (MGCFA) has been conducted, to assess whether the scale is invariant across gender. The measurement invariance analysis show that the model exhibits factorial, metric, and structural invariance across gender groups. The gender differences analysis shows mean differences between male and female students as regards all three dimensions: extending the social relations, information & collaboration and maintaining the social relations. The results of this research contribute to a better understanding of the motives of Facebook use by university students. Second, this study provides a reliable evaluation instrument that performs well across gender.

• Details
• Contents