Measuring Broadband Progress: A Quality of Life Approach

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an increasing use of broadband in everyday life activities. In addition, broadband policy has begun to shift its focus from building infrastructure to promoting broadband use and anticipating transformational benefits of broadband. However, there are limited theories, methods, measures, and data to assess positive or negative life changes from broadband use. Since broadband is viewed as a major public policy tool to improve people’s lives and to create a society in which people have an equal opportunity to succeed in their lives, research that conducts formative and summative studies of broadband use and its impacts on people’s life is valuable towards the design and evaluation of broadband policy decisions and broadband promotion initiatives. This article offers a research framework and a study approach on experiential broadband use and consequences on quality of life as a critical method to measure broadband progress in a society. The research framework can support both cross sectional and longitudinal research design. A study approach emphasizes the integration of quantitative and qualitative data to develop a richer understanding of broadband use and its impacts. A cross sectional study of computer and Internet use and impacts on quality of life in the context of community technology centers is used to showcase the research framework and the study approach.