At BYU Marriott, some of the brightest insights emerge when new questions meet familiar problems—and when students have a seat at the research table.
That’s what information systems (IS) student Ava Williams discovered when she joined a research team examining the link between technology and well-being. The Tennessee native learned about the opportunity during her junior year when she mentioned her interest in healthcare to IS faculty members Greg Anderson and Spencer Hilton. They walked her straight to the office of Mark Keith, an IS associate professor who leads health-focused research. Williams was instantly intrigued—and daunted.
“The word research can seem very intimidating,” Williams says. “But Professor Keith allowed me to join the grad students who were using Python workbooks. He suggested I do tests inside of Excel, and I discovered how much insight can be extracted from a simple formula.”
Williams was the only undergraduate on the initial research team, which included graduate students Morgan Coombs and Otgonbayar “Oogii” Erdenebaatar. Coombs and Erdenebaatar came up with the team’s research question while they were involved in the Healthcare Leadership Collaborative, an initiative that offers classes, scholarships, and other opportunities to prepare healthcare leaders. With Keith as their mentor, the duo also designed the project and its solutions. “Our goal was to determine whether mobile mindfulness apps could help students reduce stress during high-pressure periods,” explains Erdenebaatar, who was earning her MPA at the time.
The team carried out a series of experiments to see which phone-based activities decreased or increased stress levels among BYU Marriott students. Participants completed a stress-inducing task and then chose one of four phone-based activities: listening to music, gaming, scrolling social media, or using a mindfulness app. Monitors recorded participants’ heart rates before and after their chosen activity.
The result? Both gaming and social media raised stress levels, with social media causing the sharpest spike. However, using a mindfulness app lowered stress more than any other option—even more than doing nothing at all, which was the activity completed by the experiment’s control group.
Intrigued, the team pushed further. They repeated the experiment, this time sharing data about social media and mindfulness with participants before inviting them to choose an activity. Even with that knowledge, most participants still picked social media.
Williams found these results revealing. “A lot of times we know what’s best for us, but we’re self-sabotaging,” she says.
Keith sees this paradox as an opportunity to dig deeper and innovate. “The next questions are: How can we help people make better choices? How can we design the technology better to move people incrementally toward better behaviors?” he says.
Both the findings and the experience left a lasting impression on the student researchers. “It really is special to work with these professors in such a hands-on way,” Williams says. Erdenebaatar, who now works as a development specialist at Girl Scouts of Utah, echoes that sentiment: “My research was one of the highlights of my years at BYU Marriott. This project was an invaluable experience for me.”
The research nudged Williams toward pursuing a master’s degree in information systems management, and she continues collaborating with Keith as they prepare the project’s data for publication. “This research was a great reminder for me to slow down and focus on things that are important,” Williams reflects. “When we choose what’s good for us, everything comes into focus.”