ABSTRACT
In September 2010, a total of 201 children were recruited from schools in the West Midlands of the United Kingdom: 106 primary school children and 95 secondary school children. Primary and secondary school children were recruited into this study to enable us to compare their responses, in case there were distinctive differences in their mobile phone behaviours.
The primary school children were aged between 8 years and 2 months and 11 years and 1 month (average age 9;9), and comprised 51 boys and 55 girls. The secondary school children were aged between 11 years and 5 months and 14 years and 7 months (mean age 12;10) and comprised 47 boys and 48 girls. Overall the children had a verbal IQ score of 96.4 (standard deviation = 14.0), as measured by the Wechsler Abbreviated Scales of Intelligence test (Wechsler, 1999), and this indicated that the children were typically of average ability for their age, and the range of scores they demonstrated was as we would expect for the population as a whole. So we can say that the children in this study were reasonably representative of other children of the same age developmentally, and there was an even gender distribution overall and within each age group.
