Gender
Notes:
- 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.
Table of Data for All Categories
| Gender |
All |
Male |
Female |
USA |
Europe |
19-25 |
26-50 |
50+ |
| Female |
6129.00 31.30% |
0.00 0.00% |
6129.00 100.00% |
5238.00 33.41% |
196.00 14.64% |
1153.00 30.96% |
3692.00 31.46% |
690.00 28.73% |
| Male |
13454.00 68.70% |
13454.00 100.00% |
0.00 0.00% |
10438.00 66.59% |
1143.00 85.36% |
2571.00 69.04% |
8045.00 68.54% |
1712.00 71.27% |
For more information or to submit comments:
send e-mail to www-survey@cc.gatech.edu.
GVU's WWW Surveying Team
Graphics, Visualization, & Usability Center
College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332-0280