Study Finds Instant Messaging Helps Productivity

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday June 11, @09:33AM
from the you-gotta-be-kidding-me dept.

MojoKid writes "Researchers at Ohio State University and the University of California, Irvine conducted a telephone study by randomly surveying individuals employed full-time who use computers in an office environment at least five hours per week. They netted 912 respondents, of which 29.8 percent claimed to use IM in the workplace "to keep connected with coworkers and clients." Neither occupation, education, gender, nor age seem to have an impact on whether an individual is an IM user or not. The study theorizes that using IM enables individuals to "flag their availability." Doing so can limit when IM interruptions occur. Even if an IM interruption comes when it is not necessarily convenient to the recipient, it is "often socially acceptable" to ignore an incoming message or respond with a terse reply stating that the recipient is too busy at the moment to properly respond." Also another study recently found that water is wet, and a third study found that most studies waste money.