Online Survey Finds That People Are Online A Lot
from the don't-trust-50-percent-of-statistics-you-see dept
Last week, there was a much discussed story about the online study that reported that Americans choose to spend time on the Internet rather than having sex. The WSJ Numbers Guy makes an astute observation, that "people who answer online surveys aren't likely to be representative of Americans when it comes to online behavior." When he dug a bit deeper, he found that the survey was conducted with a panel of 1,011 online respondents, who responded to the survey during the week that it was open. Furthermore, the people surveyed were drawn from a pool of people that actually signed up to be surveyed. Obviously the results are skewed to users that actively use the Internet. When questioned, Ann Mack, JWT's director of trend spotting replied "The fact that the survey was conducted online may skew the results a bit." This just serves as a reminder to take studies or statistics that are presented to you with a grain of salt. In this case, the company that did the study was looking to create a new advertising category for people whose lives are so tied up with new technology -- so it's not surprising that the results that it found supported this categorization.![Hide This Hide this](https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/topclose.png)
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typical
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Say what?
Like other online users I read many news/blog sites, watch videos, listen to music (Pandora), keep up with technology news, participate in discussions on many sites and keep in touch with friends. So, yes, I spend a lot of time online. That would lead me to say that people spend a lot of time online because they can do many things in one place, in front of their computer, that they used to do sitting at the writing desk (remember those? I do), by the radio (we did this in the '40's) or in front of the TV. Course, I'm a little shy of 63 years old so I guess I'm not representative of online users. Oh, my head! I'm going back to /. .
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Re: Say what?
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And the online behavior of people who don't use the internet is measured exactly how in an online survey?
I'd mark you +5 Funny if I could.
Oh, I put my math books down forty years ago. I think it's time you put down that Pickett slide rule.
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Re: Re: Say what?
And the online behavior of people who don't use the internet is measured exactly how in an online survey?
I'd mod you +5 Funny if I could.
Oh, I put my math books down forty years ago. I think it's time you put down that Pickett slide rule.
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Re: Re: Say what?
And what exactly would be the point of conducting a survey of online use of people who don't use the internet and how would you get them to reply? I'd mod you +5 Funny if I could. I'm sure you are referring, albeit obliquely, to the "people who use the Internet less (or not at all) have more sex" thing, but still.
Oh, by the way, I put my math books down forty years ago. I think it's high time you put down that Pickett slide rule.
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thats like calling ppl to see if they have a phone.
let m guess 100% of the ppl who did the survey go online?
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New survey
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negative fecal matter
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Survey says...
Perhaps "are meaningless" rather than "with a grain of salt"?
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