The importance of representativeness as well as timeliness in studying technology: Three additional suggestions

According to figures from the United Nations, developing countries and the least developed countries have an estimated offline population of 53% and 80%, respectively, and even in developed countries, an estimated 13% of the population is offline (Li, 2021). Studying very new technologies among early adopters thus does not give a representative picture of the effectiveness of these technologies in the workplace. [...]a technology has more traction in the marketplace, we may not see how it affects those who burdened by the digital divide. Be more diverse in methods and target understudied populations Based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau (2021), in 2016 organizations with fewer than 100 workers employed 33.4% of the employees in the private sector, and organizations with under 20 workers employed 16.8% of these employees. [...]studying multiple cultures and drawing from long-standing frameworks may also be useful for building theory about the meaningful features of technologies (rather than the effects of isolated different technologies), not to mention better serve underrepresented populations.