The impact of specificity in visualizing study behaviour

Abstract

This paper investigates to what extent specificity of information in a visualization has a regulatory effect on a person's behaviour. The visualizations in this study display a person's own perception of their study behaviour. The hypothesis is that the degree of specificity of information in a visualization has a regulatory effect on a person’s general perception of the visualization. During this research, 3 experimental conditions were set up, in which students were shown a visualization with the same information, but the level of specificity of information differed. The visualization with the lowest level of information only showed the main constructs of study behaviour, the visualization with the medium level of information also showed the subconstructs of study behaviour and the visualization with the highest level of information also showed a description of the subconstructs. The data was collected by means of a questionnaire. The results of the study show that visualizations with minimal specificity are generally perceived less useful than visualizations with medium to high specificity of information. The conclusion is therefore to provide visualizations about study behavior with at least sub-constructs.