Using innovation diffusion theory to guide collaboration technology evaluation: work in progress

The cost effective development of collaboration technology requires evaluation methods that consider group practices and can be used early in a system´s life-cycle. To address this challenge, we developed a survey to evaluate collaboration technology based on innovation diffusion theory (E. Rogers, 1995). The theory proposes five attributes of innovations that influence technology adoption: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability and observability. Selecting items from existing surveys related to these attributes, we developed a prototype multi-scale survey to help evaluate whether using a system face-to-face or distributively influences study participants´ attitudes towards system adoption. We have begun refining the survey instrument and report on this process, the proposed survey questions, and the reliability and validity of the survey instrument