Demographics from the class notes
- Average age has increased to 33.0 years old
- More females are using the Web
- Average household income has decreased to $59,000
- Majority of users have no dependents
- 56.5% of users have completed college level education
- Profession:
- education: 29.6%
- computer-related profession: 27.8%
- shift from previous survey of 31.4% computer-related, and 23.7% education-related
profession
- female users tend to be primarily involved in educational occupations,
while male users were more likely to be in the computer-related profession
- More than half access Web primarily from home and pay for their own
access
- Most people's connection to the Internet is through 28.8 Kb/s modems
(38.0%) followed by 14.4 Kb/sec modems (25.5%)
- 65% were unwilling to pay access to Web sites
- Purpose of web browsers:
- browsing 78.7%
- entertainment 64.5%
- work 50.9%
- Users surveyed resided in:
- California (11.0%)
- Texas (4.8%)
- New York (4.4%)
- UK (3.2%)
- Politics:
- moderate (30.1%),
- democrats (24.5%)
- republicans (21.1%)
- "independent, leaning toward democrat" (16.4 %)
- "independent, leaning toward republican" (10.3%)
- strong interest in political issues: 92% registered to vote
- Privacy:
- 78.5% would agree to reveal personal demographic information under
certain conditions: statement regarding how information would be used should
be provided
- Only 5.9% said they would not give info under any circumstances
- Strongly objected to the idea that info could be resold to other companies
- Survey method:
- Through forms on the Web
- To broadcast the form, high exposure WWW pages, Uset net groups, computer-related
trade magazines, write-ups on daily newspapers and www-surveying mailing
list announcement were used
- Limitations of result:
- Self-selection
- respondents decide whether or not to return survey
- may reflect some systematic selecting principle that may effect collected
data
- Sampling
- not random, since surveyors have no control
Also from other sources:
- Webweek:
Internet Demographics Edging Toward Norm
- users are becoming closer to the norm. Newcomers are light users, building
up usage over time.
- Segmenting
the Internet by Thomas E. Miller
- Divide Internet users into age groups
- Younger users are more likely to socialize, through email, on-line
chat, visit newsgroups
- Younger users are more likely to browse, instead of just searching
for specific information
- Middle-aged (30 to 49 years of age) are most frequent online shopper
(60%)