General Bulleted List
Actual Job
- This table gives the numbers and percentages for what people gave as their actual job position. We added many new categories for this survey and the percentage of people in the "Other" category dropped from 36% to 27% for the Seventh survey. The three largest categories are: college student (13.7%), programmer (8.8%), and manager (4.0%).
Age
Graphs: [ALL]- The average age of users responding to the Seventh survey is 35.2 years old. The average age of users in our surveys has been slowly but steadily increasing since the Fourth survey at roughly one year per survey (Fourth: 32.7 yr., Fifth: 33.0 yr., Sixth : 34.9 yr.). The average age reported in this Survey is within the margin of error reported by FIND/SVP's 1997 American Internet User Survey of 36.5 yr. old. The consensus on average age between our data, collected through the pioneering method of using the Web to collect data, and FIND/SVP's data, collected through the traditional method of random telephone calls, helps increase our confidence that the core demographics in the Seventh Survey are representative.
- Also consistent with previous surveys is the observation that, on average, women are the same age as their male counterparts and Europeans are significantly younger than their US counterparts (30.3 yr. Europe vs. 36.0 yr.).
Community Building
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- As with the Sixth Survey, almost half (45.06% Seventh vs. 46.1% Sixth) of the respondents felt more connected to people who share their interests since coming online. Only 2.48% report feeling less connected, although a quarter of the respondents (26.65%) state that they do not know. The other 25.81% report feeling equally connected since going online. This provides some evidence for the claim that the Internet is more than just an information resource, rather it is building new communities based on common interests.
- European respondents feel more connected overall than their US counterparts (49.89% Europe vs. 44.53% US). Women are less likely to know what effect the Internet has had than men (31.00% females vs. 24.66% males). Somewhat surprising, the nature of the female response profile also applies to the 50+ yr. old age group. As compared to the younger age group, 34.01% of the 50+ aged respondents report not knowing the effect of the Internet vs. 25.35% for the 19-25 yr. old segment.
State or Country
- This table gives the numbers and percentages for the states and countries from which people answered the Survey. California (11.81%), Texas (4.81%), New York (4.54%) and Florida (3.82%) contain the largest proportion of Web users.
Cultural Barriers
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- This is a new question to the Seventh Survey, which asked "Do you think that having more web sites which are tailored to your language and culture will make people in your country more willing to use the web?" Roughly a fourth of the respondents are unsure (23.74%), with 59.42% saying "Yes" and the remaining 16.84% saying "No". Over two thirds of the European user feel that more language specific sites would facilitate Web growth in their coutnry (70.95% Eurpore vs. 58.04% US). Additionally, European users were more likley to take a postion on the issue, with only 13.52% stating that they did not know (25.24% US). Age factors into this question, with the younger users feeling that more languages would help (62.3% 19-25 yr. olds) than older users (52.04% 50+ yr. olds).
Disability
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- Our current mindset is to ask respondents about disabilities on every other survey (yearly). This is due to the stability of this demographic characteristic. Since the Web does not easily facilitate access by users with disabilities, it is not surprising that 92.07% of the users do not report any disabilities. Impaired vision is the most widely reported disability, but still only accounted for 3.3% of the responses. The other disabilities were each repo rted by less than 2% of the respondents.
- Compared to previous surveys, the percent of respondents without impairments has remained quite stable. For the Fifth Survey 91.7% reported no disabilities, 91.8% for the Fourth Survey, 91.8% for the Third Survey, and 95% for the Second Survey.
- The proportions of people with impairments are consistent across location and gender, but the age groups did reveal some differences. Elder users reported significantly more hearing, motor, and vision disabilities compared to younger users.
Education Attainment
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- The distribution of educational attainment has been virtually unchanged since the Fourth survey. For the Seventh Survey, 54.24% of respondents have completed a college or advanced degree. (This percentage was 56.1% for the Sixth Survey). European respondents continue to report higher levels of educational attainment than US respondents. Commercial Internet service providers are not as wide spread in Europe as they are in the US; as a result, many European users access the Web as a result of their affiliation with a univer sity.
- The only notable difference across gender occurs in the number of respondents that have completed some college (32.09% of females compared to 27.92% of males). The higher proportion of female users with some college experience was also found on the Sixth Survey.
Falsification of Information
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- For the Seventh Survey, 59.93% of respondents said they had never provided false information to a site when registering (compared to 63.1% on the Sixth Survey). This means that approximately 40% of respondents have provided false information. A total of 14.59% of users report falsifying information over 25% of the time--a disturbing number if you are trying to make the claim that the collected demographics of a site's online registered users are representative of the entire set of users for that site.
- A larger percentage of females than males report never having falsified information (68.00% of females vs. 56.35% of males). Also, the likelihood of having provided false information decreases with age. Both of these trends were also found in the Sixth Survey.
Favorite Late Night Talk Show Host
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- Of those respondents that stated a late night talk show host preference, Letterman was chosen over Leno more than 2 to 1 (55.43% Letterman vs. 24.76% Leno). A large percentage of European users had a favorite host other than Letterman or Leno. This is not surprising, since both of these hosts are from the US. A higher percentage of women than men preferred Leno (28.23% female vs. 23.189% male). Younger users, though, tended to prefer Letterman, with older users preferring Leno. All of these trends are consistent with results from the Sixth Survey.
Gender
Graphs: [Location] [Age]- The gender ratio is nearly identical to the past year's results (from the last two Surveys), with 31.30% of the respondents being female (31.4% female for the Fifth Survey). Please note that these percentages include all respondents. When only the US respondents are included, 33.41% of the respondents are female and 68.70% are male. This represents a slight increase since the Sixth Survey (32.42% female vs. 67.58% male). European users are still predominantly males (85.35%), which represents a slight increase in male usage for European users since the Sixth Survey six months ago (80.2% males for the Sixth Survey). There has been a slight increase in the percentage of women over age 50 in the past few Surveys (Seventh: 28.73%, Sixth: 27.1%, Fifth: 24.7%).
- These numbers help confirm our analysis that the core demographics of Web users are stabilizing. This makes sense, as once the user population becomes large (over 30 million users in the US), dramatic shifts in proportions can only result from a large influx of significantly different users. This stability enables more confidence to be placed in estimations about the future demographics of Web users, as the rate of change is much slower than in years prior. We first noted this stabilizing trend in the Sixth Survey, thus the core demographics collected in the Seventh Survey (April 1997) are not dramatically different than those collected in the Fifth Survey (April 1996). While core demographics are stabilizing, usage behaviors certainly are still changing at a rapid pace.
- The proportion of female users in the US has always been an interesting statistic to the popular media. Some research firms report the proportion of female users to be in the 40% range, while others (such as our Surveys and FIND/SVP's 1997 American Internet User Survey) report the proportion to be in the low to mid 30% range (GVU 7: 33.41% vs. FIND/SVP: 35.9%). Much of the difference between results can be explained by inspecting the definition of a user and possible age limitations placed upon the users. Our numbers, by the very nature of our sampling method, represent active Web users, whereas other numbers may more accurately reflect very casual users (i.e., they have used the Internet at least once in the past 6 months, etc.). Thus, neither number is necessarily wrong or better than the other in our opinion. We do recommend using a variety of research sources when making decisions based upon demographics.
Household Income
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- The mean average household income is $58k (US dollars). This number agrees quite well with the findings of random telephone surveys. The distribution of income levels of those who responded to this question is very similar to the Sixth and Fifth Surveys: Less than $29K: 23.94%, $30-50K: 27.96%, over $50K: 48.1%. Europe has a higher percentage of users with incomes less than $10K, which is not surprising since many European users are students. As one would also expect, older users report higher income levels, with 60.35% of 50+ yr. olds reporting income over $50K compared to only 26.37% 19-25 yr. olds. Females tend to report lower income levels than their male counterparts.
How You Heard About Survey
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- Respondents could check more than one answer for this question. Also, a new category was added in the Sixth Survey: search engines. As with all previous Surveys, most users came to the Survey because they saw a link on another web page (54.04%). This is a useful data point for those trying to increase the traffic on their own web sites--having links from other (perhaps related) sites can be very effective in drawing traffic to a site. The next most common way of coming to the survey was through a search engine (12.65%). Again this is a technique which other sites can easily take advantage of. Other effective means include: Usenet news (9.35%), our www-surveying mailing list which reminds users to participate (6.21%), and word-of-mouth via friends (5.63%). Approximately 14% of respondents reported hearing about the survey through "other methods" that were not included in the list of possible responses.
Language Specific Sites
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- This is a new question to the Seventh Survey, which asked: "Do you prefer to access web sites in your first (native) language?" This question reveal a major geographical difference, with 91.85% of the US users stating that they prefer sites in their first language (English), with only 41.22% of the European users sharing the same preference. The majority of European users report that it does not matter (49.74%). One possible reason for this result is that Europeans tend to be multi-lingual, whereas their US counterparts tend to mainly speak English. Younger users do not feel that the language of the site matters as much as older users (16.84% 19-25 yre. old vs 6.66% 50+ yr. old).
Major Geographical Location
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- The number of respondents from the US dropped 2 percentage points from the Sixth Survey (from 82.7% to 80.05%), which is very close to the level reported a year and a half ago in the Fourth Survey (80.6%). 85.46% of female respondents were from the US, but as with the Sixth Survey, all locations were more gender-balanced in this Survey compared to previous Surveys. Older respondents are more likely to be from the US than younger respondents (87.43% of those over 50 yr. old compared to 74.14% of those 19-25 yr. old).
Major Occupation
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- Nearly a third of the users (30.24%) report being in a Computer related field, with 24.48% being in Education, 20.61% Professional, 14.73% Other and 9.95% Management. European users were more likely to be in Computers or Education than their US counterparts. Women are less likely as men to be in Computer related fields (20.28% Female vs. 34.77% Male), but are equally likely to be in Management or Professional positions. Almost half of those age 19-25 are in Education (48.74%) (which includes being a student). Those aged 26-50 (35.23%) are more likely to be in Computer fields than any other age group
Marital Status
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- The proportion of married respondents remained the same in the Seventh Survey (45.44%) compared to the Sixth Survey (45.7%), with 37.09% of respondents reporting being single. More Europeans than respondents from the US report being either single or living with another. Over 3/4 of those ages 19-26 are single (76.46%), while almost 3/4 of those age 50 and over are married (71.79%). Female users are almost twice as likely to be divorced than their male counterparts (8.75% female vs. 4.95% male).
Monitor Screen Size
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- Knowledge of the size of users' screens can play an integral role in the development of content for WWW sites, as site designers need to optimize graphics to fit the majority of user's screens. Overall, monitor sizes have increased slightly from the Sixth Survey. The most common screen size (diagonal) falls between 14 and 18 inches, with 21.69% (Sixth: 25.50%) of the users reporting having a 14" monitor, 24.67% (Sixth: 24.97%) reporting having a 15" monitor, and 27.62% (Sixth: 22.77%) reporting having between a 16 and 18" monitor. Laptops, which typically have screen sizes less than 13" accounted for 4.93% of responses (Sixth: 5.7%). As with the Sixth Survey, Europeans, males, and baby boomers (26-50 yr. olds) tend to have larger screens.
Most Import Issue Facing the Internet
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- Keeping in line with the Sixth Survey, the largest category of respondents (33.58% Seventh vs. 35.9% Sixth) feel that censorship is the most important issue facing the Internet today. This is followed by privacy (26.17% Seventh vs. 26.2% Sixth) and navigation (13.14% Seventh vs. 14.1% Sixth). The issues that are the least cited as most important are cultural and language issues, each receiving under 2% of the responses. Among European respondents, navigation outranks privacy as the second most important issue. And among women, privacy outranks censorship as the most important issue. Although the top 3 concerns have the same relative ranking for each age group (censorship, privacy, navigation), younger people are far more concerned with censorship than older users.
Political Party
Graphs: [Total] [Age] [Gender]- This question was only asked of respondents in the US.
- As with the Fifth survey, respondents are fairly polarized between the two major parties. There was a slight increase in the percentage identifying themselves as Democrats in the Seventh Survey (40.74%) compared to the Sixth Survey (37.7%), but this percentage was almost identical to the Fifth Survey (41.8%). Republicans accounted for 34.10% of the respondents. Women are more likely to be associated with the Democratic Party (50.06% Democratic vs. 27.60% Republican). For users 50 years and older, the proportion of Republicans and Democrats is the same (41.31% Republican vs. 41.10% Democrat). Younger users are less likely to know their party affiliation.
Presidential Candidate
Graphs: [Total] [Age] [Gender]- This question was only asked of US Respondents.
- We asked this question nearly six months after the US Presidential elections to test the stability of our sample. Clinton was voted for by 41.05% of the users (43.0% claimed they would vote for Clinton in the Sixth Survey in October 1996). Dole received 25.61% of the responses (27.5% in the Sixth Survey). For both candidates, the Seventh Survey retrospective behavior differed from the Sixth Survey behavior by two percentage points. If we consider only those respondents who chose one of the three major candidates, the percentages are: 56.7% for Clinton, 35.4% for Dole, and 8.0% for Perot. These percentages fall within the margin of error for CNN/USA Today/Gallup Polls conducted during the same period. These findings increase our confidence in the representativeness of the sample for the Seventh Survey.
Primary Computing Platform
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- For the fourth straight survey (two years), over half of the respondents (64.54% Seventh vs. 65.91% Sixth) use some flavor of Windows (3.1, 95, or NT) as their primary computing platform. This percentage is up strongly from the Fifth Survey (58.6%) as well as the Third Survey (61.5%). Most notably, the percentage of those using Win95 has increased from 28.5% in the Fifth to 42.9% in the Sixth to 47.88% in the Seventh. The remaining users are mainly Apple users (25.59% Seventh vs. 25.85% Sixth). The other operating systems of the world (UNIX, VMS, etc.) are each used by less than 4% of the respondents. In GVU's First WWW User Survey, conducted in January 1994, over 90% of the users reported UNIX as their primary computing platform! Female and older users are more likely to user some flavor of Windows.
Primary Language
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- The vast majority (91.84% Seventh vs. 93% Sixth) reported that English was their primary language. This is a sustained increase from the Fifth survey (88.6%). For European respondents, 13.73% use German (up from 10.9% Sixth) and 6.83% use French (up from 3.6% Sixth) as their primary language. 27.76% said that they use a language which was not listed as one of our choices. Female and older users are more likely to report English as their primary language.
Primary Place of WWW Access
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- As with the Sixth and Fifth Surveys, the majority of respondents report that they primarily access the web from home, though there was an increase six months ago from the Fifth to the Sixth Surveys (60.38% Seventh vs. 63.6% Sixth vs. 55.40% Fifth). In Europe, however, only 40.10% (36.7% Sixth) report having their primary access from home (46.98% report having it from work). Across all age groups, most access the web primarily from home, but that is especially true for users over age 50 (78.1%). There are no observable gender differences.
Race
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- The majority of respondents identified themselves as "Caucasian/White" (89.35% Seventh vs. 88.1% Sixth) which is nearly identical to the Fifth survey. There are no differences for race with respect to gender. 6.11% of those aged 19-25 identified themselves as "Asian", with 95.70% of the older users reporting being " Caucasian/White."
Registered to Vote
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- As initially flushed out in the Surveys conducted in 1996, the Web remains a very viable political medium, with 89.33% of respondents reporting that they were registered to vote, a level which has remained very stable (88.8% Sixth, 91.9% Fifth). As one might expect, older respondents are more likely to be registered than younger respondents.
Sexual Preference
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- This is the first time we asked users to tell us about their sexual preference. Of those users who responded, 92.61% stated that they are heterosexual. This corresponds roughly to the proportions reported in urban US surveys. Out of the other choices, 3.05% reported being bisexual, 4.33% gay males, 3.27% lesbian, and 0.33 transgender. (Note, the "gay male" and "lesbian" responses would each be selected by a single gender, whereas the other categories could be selected by both genders.) There were no major differences between European and US users. More females reported being bisexual than their male counterparts (4.29% female vs. 2.48% male).
Voting Behavior
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- This question was only asked of those who said they were registered to vote. Of those registered, 50-60% voted in the most recent local (59.64%), national (57.89%), and legislative (50.71%) elections. Age plays a direct role in voting behavior, as older users are more likely to have voted in local, national, and legislative elections. Over one quarter of the 19-25 yr. old respondents (27.44%) report not voting in any elections. No major gender differences were observed.
Who Pays for Access
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- For this question, respondents could choose more than one answer. The same proportion of respondents report paying for their own Internet access as in the Sixth Survey (65.04% Seventh vs. 66.62% Sixth ). The trend prior to the Sixth though was one of increasing self-payment for Internet services (57.7% Fifth vs. 51.0% Fourth). This is followed by having it paid for by work (Seventh: 32.78%, Sixth: 28.76%). This supports the notion that Internet access is becoming a personal resource and not a heavily governmental and educational subsidized resource. Compared to respondents from the US, European users typically have their access to the Internet paid for by work (46.98% Europe vs. 32.00% US) rather than by themselves (47.50% Europe vs. 66.94% US). Older users are more likely to pay for access themselves (83.10%) and the 19-25 yr. old segment is more likely to have school pay for access (38.32%).
Willingness to Pay Fees
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- In past surveys, we have asked whether people would be willing to pay fees to access sites. Typically, over 2/3 of the respondents claimed that they would not pay fees. In order to help figure out why, we repositioned this question to get at the reasons people would not pay to access Web sites. Almost half of the respondents cited being able to access the content on other sites as the main reason (44.06%). Next in line, people feel that they are already paying to access the Web via connectivity charges, so why should they pay to access specific sites (29.48%). Other popular reasons include costs too much to access (7.67%) and the content is of poor quality (7.32%). Only 1.07% state that they would pay regardless.
- European users are more concerned than their US counterparts about the poor quality and that there is no easy mechanism to pay for content. Women cite that they are already paying to access the Web as their main reason (38.57% female vs. 25.34% male) followed by the existence of other sources (38.39% female vs. 46.65% male). These are the only notable differences between gender on this question. The same effect of citing already paying as the main reason as opposed to being able to find other sources also occurs with age, where older users feel they are already paying and younger users feel they can find other sources of the same information.
Years on Internet
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]- The continued migration of users to the Internet is still seen in the Seventh Survey, where 25.34% of the users have gone online in the past year. Even though this represents one out of every four respondents, it is much less than the 36.11% observed in the Sixth Survey (October 1996), the 43.1% in the Fifth Survey (April 1996), 60.3% in the Fourth (Oct 1995), and 50.21% in the Third (April 1995). Close to half of the users have now been online between 1 and 3 years (43.99% Seventh vs. 42.44% Sixth). Nearly one in five users (20.13%) joined the Internet between April 1991 and April 1994, which represents a significant increase from the Sixth survey where only 14.31% of the users had been on the Internet between 4 and 6 years. Just over 10% of the users in the Seventh Survey have been on the Internet over 7 years, compared to 7.14% in the Sixth Survey.
- This longitudinal data shows the clear bump of when the Internet began to gain wide acceptance in 1994 and 1996. If we use the estimate of the number of Internet users in the US reported by FIND/SVP as 30 million, this translates to 8 million new users in the past year.
- Female users still are flocking to the Internet, with 38.20% having gone online in the past year, compared to only 19.48% for males. This is down significantly from the Sixth Survey in October 1996, where 50.35% of the female respondents and 29.60% of the male respondents went online in the past year. Females with under 6 months experience has declined to 19.19% from 27.65% in the Sixth Survey, 33.97% in the Fifth, 36.8% in the Fourth, and 39.5% in the Third Survey. The over 50 yr. old age group of users is also decreasing, with only 33.72% having gone online in the past year compared to 48.26% in the Sixth Survey and 55.86% in the Fifth Survey.
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