Compliance-Gaining Theory

Compliance gaining theory was introduced by Gerald Marwell and David Schmitt in the year 1967 and since then, it has gained attention on the fact that it has some reality on its allegations. This theory majors on the behavior conformity and situations where one manipulates the other to cooperate with what she or he wants even if the victim does not like the idea or the actions. Artifacts are items or ornaments which have some historical backgrounds. It is important to note that artifacts can also be intangible such as the virtual art for instance, internet. The purpose of this research is to test the use of a virtual artifact, in this case, internet, in schools using compliance gaining theory. The article aims at concluding the best technique which can be used to make the student comply with the strategies which are put in place by the administration to ensure that the internet use in schools is effective. The paper presents a quantitative research to either prove or disapprove the hypothesis that assertion is the best compliance gaining technique which can be used by the administration to ensure that the internet, as a virtual artifact, is well used in the school environment.

Introduction

In many occasion, we need to be reading the same page with certain individuals under specific conditions. On some occasion, we need people to comply with what we want them to do for us. The word comply has been used time and again, and it has been exhibited mostly in the government institutions and many other organization such as schools, profit-making institutions, and many others. The compliance gaining theory was developed by two individuals, Gerald Marwell and David Schmitt in the year 1967 when they carried out an experiment where their main interest was to know more about the conditions which make teens comply with their studies. Since then, this term has been used on many occasions, and the theory has been applicable in many situations to get people get their job done (Russ, 2011). The basis of this theory lies in the definition of the word compliance. The term compliance is defined as changing the ability to make someone change their perception or behavior due to request, force or direction. It therefore, implies that compliance gaining is an act of creating a change in behavior on something.

Artifacts are words which many people and scholars used to refer to objects which are human-made and those that have some archeological history. The fact is that not all artifacts must have a history. An artifact can even be made five seconds ago and is still termed as artifacts. This aside, the introduction of technology brought with it the digital world. This brought about another form of an artifact which was called the virtual artifact. An example is an internet. The internet has provided many advantages which almost equals its numerous disadvantages in the society. It has been of help in many schools. However, not once or twice have not been hearing news from social media and other sauces that internet has built and also ruined the education. Many students who get access to the internet in school have been found to only use nearly 10% of their time to do positive activities with the internet. On the other hand, nearly 90% of the student when accessing internet in schools, use it for other activities such as listening to music, watching videos, video gaming and many other activities which add less value to their studies. The question has been, what the best way to make student benefits from the use of this virtual art in the schools? In this study, the compliance gaining theory is used to test the best way which we can use the virtual artifact (internet) to make the student use it beneficially so that it can add value in our education system (Rudolph & Riley, 2017).

Literature review

Compliance gaining theory

Scholars have done a lot of work relating to the compliance gaining theory. First, they have given a different definition of this theory as well as their perspectives. Moreover, they have carried out many studies on the theory trying to relate it to one concept and others. Some have also criticized the theory in many ways. Moreover, many scholars have also majored on the issue of internet and have also tried to know more on how it can be best used in the school environment to make the education even better for the students and also teachers. According to Carpenter, (2013)Compliance gaining theory is one of the best strategies which can be used by whoever is need of another individual to help him or her perform a given task or act desirably whether or not the person love the action or hate it. Invented by Gerald Marwell and David Schmitt in the year 1967, Compliance gaining theory is not new in the worlds, it has been used in the political field, the social field and also in the business world to gain customers and other. It has also been used to have the production of the business or company increased. Compliance theory has been tested using different artifacts and, most results according to Carpenter, (2013) have been successful. As asserted by Ifinedo (2012), Compliance theory has many elements which can be used to convince or persuade an individual to act or do something which either they like, or they are not willing to do. The first element which is pointed out by Ifinedo (2012) is bargaining. According to this scholar, many people have succeeded in manipulating or persuading others to have their wishes done through bargaining. The scholar claims that through bargaining, we are capable of gaining compliance even under tricky situation by quoting higher prices or higher tokens of appreciation. He further claims that benefit is another better manner of gaining compliance from others. In this case, the author claims that we can promise people in the event of undertaking activity which is against their wishes that we will give them some benefits. According to this author, such individuals will always give in to such kind of benefits and have our wish done. 

Young (2013) further assert that criticizing others is also a possible means of gaining compliance. He claims that we can make other people comply with what we want by simply criticizing them. In this case, it is more of attacking the person whom we wish to do for us a favor at a personal level. Young (2013) claims that this strategy is even beneficial in case we are aware of the weak appoint of the person. For instance, if we have an idea that the person whom we want to manipulate to help extend a favor to us is lazy, then we merely attack him based on this quality and criticize him or her. For example, if we tell them that “you are so lazy, you can’t even do anything, why don’t we go out for a cup of tea?” This statement can change that kind of an individual and make them change their mind to perform a given task.

According to Gray (2010), compliance is all about “a change in behavior that is requested by another person or group; the individual acted in some way because others asked him or her to do so (but it was possible to refuse or decline)." Gray (2010) argues that the best way to make people adhere to instruction is through assertion. According to this article, the assertion is one of the major ways of gaining compliance. He defines it as gaining compliance through demands. In this case, one is forced to comply by making strict demands which have to be followed, or else the person gets punished. He presents experiments in the book which was aimed at making students do well in their exams. In this experiment, he claims that the students who were promised punishment in case they fail their exams at the end of the term recorded increments in the end exams results as opposed to those who were not. Gass and Seiter (2015), advocate for positive way of compliance gaining. In their article, they define compliance gaining as a situation which occurs “whenever a person intentionally induces another person to do something that they might not have done otherwise." They emphasize the fact that compliance gaining is more of the behavioral act. The main argument which the two authors present in this article is that with compliance-gaining strategies, it is possible to achieve objective even under challenging situations. The dominant ideology in this article which the authors insists is that most of the profit gaining companies resort to the compliance gaining theory to help them make their staff achieve the organization will. 

They further give an example of experiments which was done in an organization whose name has not been revealed due to privacy issues. In this organization, the human resource managers wanted to have the best way in which he could influence his workers to perform a task which was not appealing to any of the staff. Due to the importance of the task to the overall wellbeing of the organization, the manager opted to gain compliance from his workers. He tried many methods to help him gain compliance from the workers. He tried Altercating both positive and negative way but did not achieve the target. He also tried altruism which was also meant to make the workers do the task willingly, but this too did not achieve the expectation of this manager. However, when he tried the last option which according to the authors, was left in his hand, the result was very appealing. The last one which he used was bargaining. In this sense, he collected some workers whom he knew could do the job perfectly. He then told them that they would do the job but for a fee. They both bargained the fee until they came up with a better way of paying the extra fee which was needed. This worked wonderfully for the manager, and at long last, the work was done despite the fact that the employees were not willing to do so. In conclusions, the authors have claimed that compliance gaining theory is very useful and can be used by any person who is in need to get another person do anything for him or her. 

Artifact

Artifacts are items which are human-made and which have a particular history of interest. Anker and Feeley (2011) noted that one could make artifact either knowingly or unknowingly. However, their authors insist that an artifact has to have the author for it to qualify as one. The virtual artifact is a new field. In this case, the item of the discussion is not tangible; however, it is in the person's mind. Good examples, in this case, are the internet, virtual reality, video game and many others. Internet which is one of the most known virtual artifacts has been used to improve education everywhere in the world. Many pieces of literature have been written, and strategies drown by many scholars on how it can be better used in schools to add values. Claus, Chory and Malachowski (2012) noted that there is an urgent need to persuade the student to make use of the internet to boost their academic progress. The author’s perception, in this case, is that the use of internet in the schools is not achieving much for the students and the teachers because the students are not complying with the strategies which are in place to help in boosting the internet usage in the schools. The authors appeal that there is need to have strategies which are good enough to ensure that students comply with this policies. The same issue is further asserted by Kopelman and Prottas (2010). They present a study done by a particular body which aimed at revealing that internet usage in public schools is underachieving. According to the result which is tabulated in this article, it is apparent that most student if given opportunity on their own to use the internet as a learning sauce, they divert their attention to other issues such as video gaming, watching videos, listening to music and many other activities which do more harm than good to them. The appeal of the authors is that student needs to comply with the strategies which are put by the teachers to ensure they make use of the internet to help them. The authors claim that the teachers are not using the best strategies to gain compliance from the student so that they can even remain focused when the teachers are not around them to ensure that they are using the internet in the best way possible. 

Despite the fact the many scholars have majored on this theory as demonstrated in this part, it is apparent that none has even attempted to have any artifact tested using this theory. Moreover, no author in the list above has attempted to relate this theory with any contemporary or virtual art with an intention to test the artifact using the theory. This demonstrates that there is a significant gap which needs to fill in this field so that the public can get to know more about using this theory to test artifacts. Alternatively, no author is giving a clear way compliance gaining strategy which can be used to enhance the use of internet in the school. It means that there is lack of information on a definite strategy or a clear technique of gaining compliance which can be used by the teachers in schools to ensure that the student complies with the rules and strategies put in place to ensure that internet is well used in school to add value. This is the focus of this research. The research is focused on concluding the best strategy of the compliance gaining that can be used to ensure that the use of internet in schools is well done, and student complies with the strategies put in place for them to benefits from the use of the internet. The article hypothesizes that the use of the assertion or the use of command and putting strict rules is the best compliance techniques which can make the student use the internet in the schools positively.

Methodology

Research design

The research was quantitative, and the rationale for choosing this type of study was because the data which were to be used needed deep calculation and analysis. The study incorporated different methods such as the interview, legal cases review and the discussion forum in one of the schools in the city of Florida. Due to privacy purposes and to be in line with the boundaries of ethics in research, the name of the school is not revealed in this research article. The main agenda of this methods and the entire research was to come up with a conclusion on which technique of the compliance gaining theory is the best to test the use of the internet as a virtual artifact in the schools. The research objective is to use the compliance attaining theory to test the use of the internet as a virtual artifact in schools.

Study sample and sampling techniques

The first face of the research involved the interview. In this case, a list was made which had the names of people who were preferred to be interviewed within the school. Within the list, some of the most prefer participants included the following; the students who comprised the majority of the participants, there were the staffs mostly those who were teaching computer studies and technology, there were those staffs whose subjects were more reliant on the use of computer, there were those staffs who were working in the computer laboratories and many other staffs who were concerned with this issues. To have a good sample, we randomly sampled classes or the grades and came up with seven grades which were first grade, second, third, fifth, seventh, eighth, and the tenth-grade students. After this, we did a cluster sampling of the student on each grade to come up with a sample of 200 students. After this, random sampling technique was used again to come up with 50 students who used as the participants. This same procedure was used for the staff until we got the final sample of 10 staff; this made the totals sample to mount to 60 participants. This was the sample which was used for the questionnaire, interview, and discussion.

Data collection method

Three data collection techniques were used in this research. The first was questionnaire. This comprised of different questions which were demanding answers from the staff and the students. The questions majorly touched on the strategies which the staff has been using to ensure that internet is efficiently used in the schools, the strategies which were in place to ensure that student comply. The questions touched the following strategies to get know which one was most preferred. The first one was the positive Altercating, there was negative Altercating, there was the Altruism, there was also the Assertion, the authority appeal, the evasive stimulation, Bargaining was also incorporated and the last one was the benefits. All these were made in the form of questions and ask in the questionnaire. The next data collection technique was an interview. In this case, nearly the same questions which ask in the survey formed the basis of the broad interview which was done. The next technique was the discussion forum which also used nearly the same question but in a, more confined manner. It is important to note that this point that all this were timed too since we had a fixed schedule, and so was the school. 

Limitation of the study

Time was the major limiting factors for the research. We were given specific time which we were to operate or involve the participants before they resume their classes. The second limiting factor was the chance of interaction since most of the staff were busy as the timing was wrong, it was during the examination period, and the students were very busy and so were the staff. Bias was the next limitation of the study as the factual information which we needed was exposed to the different risk of alteration.

Ethical considerations

Ethics was the core of the research. First, we did not use the real names of the participants. This was done to ensure that we conceal the identity of the participants. They were given names based on the alphabets such as A, B, …, and others. The name of the school also was undisclosed. Secondly, the participants were given freedom of autonomy, where they could participate, or withdraw from the list at their will. Secondly, there was consent form which was distributed to all the participants this was to inform them on what was the purpose of the research which they were to participate in. It was also used as a conformity to ethical acts which guides the scientific research in any field. Lastly, it was supposed to brief the percipients on some fine details which they needed to get before participating in the research.

Analyses and results

Likert scale was used to scale the responses which were gotten from the questionnaire. The scale comprised of 1-5 calibration and was very efficient in this case. The firs were the strongly disagree; the second was disagree, the tied scale was neither agreed nor disagree, the fourth was Agree, and the fifth was strongly agree. Following were some of the issues which were asked and were rated using the Likert scale;

The school uses internet effectively?

The student confirm with strategies put by the school administration to uses internet effectively?

The student is aware of the strategies put in place by the administration to have internet well used in school?

Student appreciates the strategy?

The staffs are aware of the strategy?

Staffs appreciate the strategies?

The strategy is strict?

The strategy is inclusive?

It is demanding?

It needs to be changed?

Aversive is good?

Authoritative appeal is the best?

Assertion is leading?

What should be done?

What would you prefer?

ANOVA was also used in this case. After analysis, the result was as follows. The first finding was that the internet was not well utilized in the school. Most participant greed that student was not utilizing internet positively. See appendix I. The second result was that the main strategy which was preferred by this school to make the student comply with adequate use of internet in school was evasive stimulation. It scored most points in interview and discussion. It scored an average of 41%. The second was the authoritative appeal which scored 20%. The third was the Assertion which scored 10% while others shared 20% check the graph in Appendix II. The third and the last result was the best option which most students and the staff opted and thought was the best way which could be used to ensure that the student complies with the internet. This was the core of the research and it was very fascinating that it proves the thesis of the paper that assertion was the best compliance ginning techniques which would be the best to use when we want the student to comply with the strategies which are in place to ensure that internet is used effectively in the school environments. Based on the data gathered on this issues and the results analyzed on the same, it was apparent that most staff an and student who were the main participants preferred assertion as the best method which could be used to gain compliance of the student to use internet effectively, and also ensure that they don’t divert their attention to other issues which contribute less to their performance. The result is presented in Appendix III. 

Discussion and conclusion

Based on the result and the analysis done on this paper, there are facts which are very apparent. The first is that there is a low efficient utilization of internet in schools. This is attributed to the fact that there is sluggishness on the part of the staff, administration and the students. The staffs are supposed to ensure that they supervise or evaluate the use of internet among the students to ensure that they use it purposely for education. They should report these result to the school administration which should take stern strategies to ensure that internet is efficiently used among the students in the school environment. The student too should take it upon themselves to ensure that they make use of internet efficiently. Aversive simulation merely is not working in this institution since most of the students don’t like the use of force, and they tend to develop a negative attitude towards such strategies. This leads to resistance to compliance gain strategy they are exposed to. This is evident in this institution as most students are claiming that it is more of a caste system put on their heads. Lastly, the research has proven beyond reasonable doubt that compliance gaining theory can be very useful in enforcing the fair use of internet purposely for education in most schools in the world. The fact that many participants claimed that in case assertion system is introduced in the classroom to make the student comply would work proves that the theory is excellent and can be used to ensure that internet is used well in the learning institutions.

References

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Claus, C. J., Chory, R. M., & Malachowski, C. C. (2012). Student antisocial compliance-gaining as a function of instructor aggressive communication and classroom justice. Communication Education , 61 (1), 17-43.

Gass, R. H., & Seiter, J. S. (2015). Persuasion: Social influence and compliance gaining . Routledge.

Gray, C. S. (2010). Gaining Compliance: The Theory of Deterrence and its Modern Application. Comparative Strategy , 29 (3), 278-283.

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Young, O. R. (2013). Compliance & Public Authority: A Theory with International Applications . Routledge.