Educational Attainment
Primary Language
Age
Marital Status
Geographic Location
There was some backsliding in the percentage of female respondents to the 10th Survey (33.6%) when compared to the previous two surveys (38.7% Ninth, 38.5% Eighth). The current percentage is comparable to the levels of the Seventh survey, which was conducted a year and a half ago (33.4%). More research will be needed to verify whether this represents the beginning of an actual trend, or whether it is an artifact of our sampling method. Interestingly, Europe showed an increased percentage of female respondents--18.4%, up from 16.3% in the Ninth survey six months ago. Regardless of geographic location, new users (those who have been online for less than a year) are still quite gender-balanced with 48.5% being female and 51.5% being male. There is also a new categorization of respondents used in this survey--by skill levels. (See Skill Levels for an explanation). Those who were novices were nearly equally divided between male and female.
Respondents are quite highly educated with 87.8% (80.9% Ninth) having at least some college experience and 59.3% (50.1% Ninth) having obtained at least one degree. These percentages reverse the trend of decreasing education levels that we have observed over the past 4 surveys. However, trends can only be observed over time, so future surveys will tell whether this is an actual trend or a momentary reversal. The relationship between skill level is an interesting one: respondents with college degrees account for the largest percentage of experts, but all skill levels occur at all levels of educational attainment. In other words, by our definition of novice and expert, there are some experts who are still in high school and some novices who have Ph.Ds.
Since the survey is only available in English and the majority of the advertising for the survey is in English, it is not surprising that the majority of respondents (92.2%) cite English as their primary language (i.e. the one they speak most of the time, regardless of whether it is their "native" language). This is nearly identical to the percentages in the Eighth and Ninth Surveys (93.1% for both). After English, German (1.5%), French (0.8%), and Dutch (0.8%) were the most commonly used languages.
The Tenth survey shows a sizable increase in average age--from 35.1 years old in the Ninth survey to 37.6 years old in the Tenth. For the past two years, the average age had been hovering around 35 years, but it may be on the move again. As in previous surveys, the age profile for Europe is quite different from the US profile, resulting in an average age of 30.9 years. Males and females are identical in average age, but there are more females in the 25-50 age range than in the older or younger extremes. Average age decreases with both the number of years someone has been on the Internet and with their skill level. The average age for someone with less than one year on the Internet increased by 4.5 years to 41.4 years old.
The largest category of respondents is married (47.6%) and the next largest is single (31.7%). These percentages represent a shift toward married respondents and away from singles, but the relative rankings are unchanged.
As in all previous surveys, the majority of respondents are currently in the US (84.7%, 84.4% Ninth). The next most common locations are Europe (7.3%, 5.8% Ninth), Canada (3.8%, 4.9% Ninth) and Oceania (2.0%, 2.3% Ninth). 90% of the female respondents are currently in the US. The US also has the highest percentage of new users with 90% of respondents who have been online for less than a year. Skill levels are distributed across the different geographic locations with the US having the highest percentage of both novice (87.9%) and expert (85.0%) respondents.