Method
An
online survey was conducted as commonly used in meeting research (for
advantages and disadvantages, see Wagner-Schelewsky & Hering, 2019).
Previous studies on meeting lateness suggest that results from
experimental settings (e.g., Allen et al., 2018) and online surveys
(e.g., Allen et al., 2021) are equally valid. The survey was conducted
using the tool soSci-Survey (Leiner, 2019) and followed a 2x2
between-subjects design (meeting: on time vs. late; country: Germany vs.
Italy). Participants could choose between a German, English, or Italian
language version of the survey. Participation in the survey was possible
over a two months period from March to May 2022.
Data collection and data analysis
procedures in this study were approved by the Ethics Committee
[details omitted for double-anonymized peer review] (proposal 297).
The study was preregistered [link omitted for double-anonymized peer
review]. All materials, raw data files, as well as the used analysis
script can be found in our OpenScienceFramework project:
https://s.gwdg.de/FEIU7k [anonymized link for peer-review].
Sample
According to an a priori power analysis calculated using G*Power (Faul
et al., 2009) for a two-factor analysis of variance, at least a total ofN = 128 participants were required (f = .25, 1-ß =
.80, α = .05). We expected a moderate effect size and
approximately equal group sizes in each design cluster (cf. Allen et
al., 2021).
Participants were recruited online via posts published on web portals.
After opening the survey link, participants selected their preferred
language (German, English, Italian). Participation was not compensated.
Completion of the survey was estimated to take five minutes, though
participants took about 2.5 minutes on average (M = 165.48
seconds; SD = 63.82).
The link to the questionnaire was accessed a total of 709 times during
the survey period of which 482 surveys were started. Overall, 303
participants fully completed the survey (37.14 % drop out), of which
279 participants (77.42 % women, 20.07 % men, 1.43 % diverse, 1.08 %
no gender; age: M = 25.1 years, SD = 4.82, range: 19-57
years) were included in the analysis. Participants were excluded if no
written consent was given (n = 2) or if participants did not
study in either Italy or Germany (n = 22). All included
participants gave written consent to participate in the survey. Of the
279 participants, 141 had studied in Germany and 138 in Italy during the
last six months; 141 participants (50.54 %) chose the German version of
the survey, 129 participants (46.24 %) chose Italian, and 9
participants chose the English version. Participants studied law,
economics, and social sciences (29.03 %), humanities (25.81 %),
mathematics and natural sciences (11.11 %), human medicine and health
sciences (9.68 %), engineering (2.51 %), arts and art science (1.79
%), agriculture, forestry, nutrition and veterinary medicine (1.43 %),
sports (0.72 %), and other disciplines (17.92 %).
Operationalization and
measurement
To reflect the diversity of
meeting formats, meetings were broadly defined as the ”most
recent online meeting in an educational context that lasted longer than
15 minutes and involved at least three people.” A similar description
can be found in prior research (e. g., Crowe et al., 2019; Allen et al.,
2021).
Participants’ meeting satisfaction was assessed using Briggs et
al.’s (2003) twelve-item comprehensive scale. For the analyses, the
four-item subscales of SP, SO and PGA were treated as individual
constructs. This validated scale has already been used across countries
(cf. Briggs et al., 2006; Reinig et al., 2009). Items were answered
using a 7-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly
agree).
Meeting lateness was operationalized as a dichotomous item (”Did
the meeting start late?”). This is also found in other studies (e.g.,
Rogelberg et al., 2014), where the duration of the delay was to be
entered as free text rather than given as a cut-off (e.g., five- or
ten-minute delay in Allen et al., 2018). Expanding on Allen et al.’s
(2021) operationalization, participants were asked to name reasons for
the delay as an exploratory variable that was not presumed to be
person-specific. The subjective perception of lateness was exploratively
addressed (”A lateness of … minutes in an online meeting in an
educational context represents unpunctuality for me.”). Similar
approaches can be found in Rogelberg et al. (2014) and van Eerde and
Azar (2020).
Cultural context was operationalized in line with Allen et al.
(2021) study via the following item: ”In which country did you mainly
study in the last six months?”. As control variables , the number
of participants, meeting duration, and number of meetings per week were
recorded as control variables. Demographic variables (i.e., age, gender,
study major) were also collected.
The questionnaire was initially prepared in English and translated to
German and Italian by the first author. Translations were validated
using a simple back-translation (Wendt-Hildebrand et al., 1983) by
independent translators who had the linguistic qualifications and a
required cultural understanding. A pilot test was carried out to test
the functionality and comprehensibility of the questionnaire.
Analysis
Statistical analysis was performed using the open-source software R (R
Core Team, 2017). The detected statistical outliers (n = 11 cases
considering an interquartile range of 1.5) were not excluded for the
main analysis, as indicated in the preregistration (even when excluded,
the results do not change notably).
Assumptions of the two-factor ANOVA (Hays, 1978) were checked. A left
skewed distribution is present for all constructs of meeting
satisfaction. The data is not normally distributed according to the
Shapiro-Wilk test (for SP, SO and PGA: p < .001). The
variances are also not equal according to Levene’s test (exemplary for
PGA: interaction F (3, 275) = 4.622, p = .004; PE landF (1, 277) = .005, p = .942; PE delay F (1, 277) =
13.089, p = .0004). Further challenges arise from the unbalanced
design that could not be influenced due to the correlative nature of our
study. Consequently, the planned analysis was discarded and a
non-parametric procedure was applied with the correction of degrees of
freedom according to Box (1953), in which no such distributional
assumptions apply (Seistock et al., 2021). An overview of the procedure
and the functions is given by Lüpsen (2021a; 2021b).