[Air-l] the colorado survey

Wed Mar 8 19:04:07 PST 2006

I'm assuming insignificant gender differences means that it was somewhere
between 47.5-52.5% males to females.

But some of the results raised a red flag for me.
When reporting results such as "All teens did X", this suggests that too
vague a question was asked, or that there was some pretty heavy
self-selection. I don't want to jump to conclusions on the survey methods
right off the bat, but this was an online survey - sent to people's email
inbox. 

It hope that the data wasn't binary (Do you value people who have technical
skills yes/no), but rather something a little more neutral:
"When I think about which friends are important to me, I consider their
skills with a computer" Strongly disagree to Strongly agree.

If it was neutral and using an ordinal scale and everyone agreed - then
that's awesome. 

[And it certainly can happen. On my recent survey (with Elder Wellman :P) we
asked "How much has the internet affected the following":* Shopping etc...
ALL respondents said that the Internet either did not affect or made it
easier to manage money, connect with family, to connect with friends, and to
meet new people.  No one said the internet made it more difficult.

As an aside, some did say it made it more difficult to: find health
information, learn new things, shop and contact members of the household. ]

--
I'm really looking forward to hearing more about the study - makes me feel
like I was born 10 years to early - with my savvy online personae and
fabulous tech skillz, I could have been the hippest cat on the block. Or
not. Anyways.

Take Care,
BERNiE

Bernie Hogan
PhD Student
NetLab, Knowledge Media Design Institute
Deartment of Sociology
University of Toronto

*Yes, we should have said "has the internet affected" and not "how
much"...but still does not imply an effect not an effect in particular
direction. Nevertheless, we retooled said question on a recent survey.

I received a message from joshua raclaw at approximately 3/8/06 4:39 PM.
Above is my reply.

> It sounds like an interesting survey.  Adding to what Barry mentioned, I'm
> wondering what exactly 'insignificant gender differences' are (although, if
> All respondents answered the same, maybe that's not a tremendously useful
> variable), and whether ethnicity or socioeconomic class or similar variables
> were considered in the sample.
> 
> Do we know when the results will be made public?
> 
> Joshua
> 
> 
> 
> Joshua Raclaw
> Dept of Linguistics
> University of Colorado
> 
> Quoting Barry Wellman <wellman at chass.utoronto.ca>:
> 
> * I am bemuzzled by the Colorado teen internet survey which Reid Cornwell
> * has shared with us.
> *
> * Here is what he posted:
> *
> * "The Center For Internet Research just completed an online survey. While
> * the
> * results are preliminary the trends are clear and as follows:
> *
> * *       Links to the survey form were sent via email to 2000 Colorado
> * teens
> * between 14 and 18
> * *       1,000 were in rural settings and 1,000 were urban
> * *       1,123 people responded
> * *       610 rural kids responded (insignificant gender differences)
> * *       515 urban kids responded (insignificant gender differences)
> * *       All respondents reported that they participated in some sort of
> * real-time chatting
> * *       All reported that they did so while doing other tasks (homework
> * etc.)
> * *       All reported that they preferred this form of communication rather
> * than telephone
> * *       All reported that they spent more time chatting online or emailing
> * than they spent in f2f activities
> * *       All reported that they downloaded music at some time
> * *       All reported that they share music, links data, and homework with
> * their friends
> * *       All reported that they valued technical skills of their peers and
> * it
> * appears that kids who help them keep their devices working had certain
> * status
> * *       All reported that they did not perceive a peer to peer negative
> * reaction related to computer use or skills
> * *       All reported that kids who did not use these devices were seen as
> * odd or different. (stigma)"
> * /END PREVIOUS POST
> *
> * This apparently is an internet-only population.
> * A few questions:
> *
> * 1. What was the sampling frame? Was it a random sample?
> * 2. What was the response rate?
> * 3. And most importantly, I am immensely impressed that All of the
> * respondents agreed in All of the items mentioned above. Even Brezhnev
> * only had 99% or so voting for him in USSR elections in the 1980s, as I
> * recall. What is it about Colorado teens that they agree with each other so
> * thoroughly?
> *
> *  Barry
> *  _____________________________________________________________________
> *
> *   Barry Wellman         Professor of Sociology        NetLab Director
> *   wellman at chass.utoronto.ca  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman
> *
> *   Centre for Urban & Community Studies          University of Toronto
> *   455 Spadina Avenue    Toronto Canada M5S 2G8    fax:+1-416-978-7162
> *       To network is to live; to live is to network
> *  _____________________________________________________________________
> *
> *
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-- 