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.