[This document is a part of the Asia Web Watch: a Register of Statistical Data (est. 1 Oct 1997)]

The Scholarly Uses of the Internet:
1998 Online Survey

Dr T. Matthew Ciolek,
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies,
Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
tmciolek@coombs.anu.edu.au

Document created: 9 Mar 1998. Last revised: 4 Sep 2004

Introduction

The first subsets of the Internet, or the global network of networks, were established between 1969 and 1972. Despite such an early start, for a number of years the Internet functioned largely as a sporadic tool for remote logins, file transfers and, above all, for electronic mail transfers. It was only recently, since 1991, or since the advent of WAIS online databases, PC-based email software, gopher catalogs of links to information repositories and anonymus ftp archives of data, documents and software that the Internet gradually began to be regarded as a commonplace, albeit minor, feature of the scholarly information space. And it is only since September 1993, or since the introduction of the first modern WWW browser (software for hypertext navigation and display) that the Internet became recognised as a worthwhile tool for productive scholarly work.

The WWW took the world by storm and within a few months, it became the widest known, used and talked-about technology for fast, elegant and simple provision and reception of large volumes of coherently structured online information. This WWW explosion (from less than 1,000 Web servers in January 1994 to over 6,000,000 in March 1998) [and over 46,000,000 in early 2004, see http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/. tmc, 04 Sep04] has made a major impact world wide on research and tertiary education organizations. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the number of people connected to the Internet, the range of its uses as well as the amount of time being spent on browsing the Net have grown dramatically over the last 3 or 4 years.

However, despite several large-scale of Internet surveys (GVU 1997) precise details of these trends remain unknown. This research note aims to redress the situation.

The Online Survey

In February 1998 an impromptu questionnaire surveying professional uses of the Internet was distributed via email to 1767 subscribers of seven English language electronic mailing lists specialising in Asian and Pacific studies: Allowing for a 10% overlap between memberships of these electronic agoras an estimated total of 1590 individuals were approached with the survey. During a two week period 20 Feb - 6 Mar 1998 a total 280 valid responses were received which sugests a 17.6% response rate.

These 280 self-selected responses came from 38 countries (see Table 1), including 53 replies from persons resident in Australia. [1]

Respondents Details

The first four tables provide information on people who took part in our online survey.

Table 1 identifies their geographical provenance. Table 2 describes the type of work performed by those people. Table 3 lists the number of years they have spent working with the Internet. Table 4 describes the number of hours per week the respondents spent in 1997 while working online.
                 TABLE 1
      Respondents' country of residence
Country                 Frequency   Percent
-----------------------------------------------
US                          108     38.7
Australia                    53     19.0
Canada                       12      4.3
Germany                      12      4.3
UK                           12      4.3
Japan                        10      3.6
NZ                            7      2.5
Netherlands                   7      2.5
Israel                        5      1.8
France                        4      1.4
Malaysia                      4      1.4
Singapore                     4      1.4
Denmark                       3      1.1
HK                            3      1.1
Italy                         3      1.1
Norway                        3      1.1
Spain                         3      1.1
Switzerland                   3      1.1
China                         2       .7
Indonesia                     2       .7
Russia                        2       .7
Austria                       1       .4
Bahamas                       1       .4
Belgium                       1       .4
Cayman Isl.                   1       .4
Fiji                          1       .4
Finland                       1       .4
Greece                        1       .4
India                         1       .4
Mexico                        1       .4
Palestine                     1       .4
Philippines                   1       .4
Poland                        1       .4
Portugal                      1       .4
S.Korea                       1       .4
Sweden                        1       .4
Taiwan                        1       .4
Thailand                      1       .4
Missing data                  1       Missing
-----------------------------------------------
                 Total      280    100.0

                  TABLE 2
          Respondents' Employment
Place of work       Frequency  Percent
-----------------------------------------------
Government                   14      5.0
Research                     86     30.7
Education                   109     38.9
Business                     36     12.9
NGO/Not For Profit           16      5.7
Other                        19      6.8
-----------------------------------------------
                 Total      280    100.0


                 TABLE 3
    Years of Experience with Internet
Years                    Frequency  Percent
-----------------------------------------------
1-3                         118     42.4
4-6                         120     43.2
7-9                          24      8.6
10+                          16      5.8
Missing data                  2     Missing
-----------------------------------------------
                 Total      280    100.0

Range:          1-25 years of experience with the Internet [2]
Average:         3.9 years of experience with the Internet

These data suggest that participants in this survey have much longer experience with the Internet that did respondents in the Oct-Nov 1997 Survey (GVU 1997) where 10,108 participants reported that 74.7% of them had 1-3 years experience with the Net, 18.2% - 4-6 years, and 6.9% - 7 or more years.
                TABLE 4
   Hours per Week of Online Work in 1997
Hours                      Frequency  Percent
-----------------------------------------------
5 and less                   27      9.7
6-10                         32     11.6
11-15                        38     13.7
16-20                        39     14.1
21-25                        24      8.7
26-30                        10      3.6
31-35                        14      5.1
36-40                         9      3.2
41-45                         2       .7
46-50                         6      2.2
over 50                      13      4.7
Unspecified no of hrs        63     22.7
Missing data                  3     Missing
-----------------------------------------------
                 Total      280    100.0

Range:          1-95 hours of online work per week (0.1-13.6 hrs/day) [3]
Average:        19.7 hrs of online work per week
The collected data indicate that in 1997 people working predominantly in research and tertiary education environments (with a bulk of them likely to be concerned with Asian and Pacific studies) have on average 4 years of experience with the Internet and that every week they work about 20 hours (or 4 hours each workday) on the Net.

Moreover, as the Table 5 shows, there is a positive and statistically significant (Chi square=4.47855 df=1 significance=.03432) correlation between the length of experience with the Internet and the total numbers of hours a person is likely to stay online.

                       TABLE 5
          Length of experience with the
  Internet and no of hours spent working online

               YEARS SPENT ON INTERNET
                                    Row
                   | 1-4  |  5+  | Total
             ------+------+------+
              1-20 |    90|    45|   135
 ONLINE WORK       |      |      |  63.7%
 HRS/WEEK          +------+------+
               21+ |    40|    37|    77
                   |      |      |  36.3%
                   +------+------+
            Column     130     82    212
             Total   61.3%  38.7%  100.0%
In other words, as people gain experience with the use of the network, they also tend to increase the amount of time spent working with it.

These data are in line with the results of the Oct-Nov 1997 Survey (GVU 1997) where 10,108 participants reported that 85% of them was using the Internet daily and that the seasoned users (3 yrs +) are much more likely to use the Net daily (94%) than novice (0-1 year) users (78%).

The Online Work: Popularity and Intensity

In addition to the above details, the survey also collected information on the numbers of people engaged in various categories of networked activities and on the amount of weekly online work.

Activities on the Net are twofold: (1) traversing the system and making use of its various information resources; (2) active research and construction work aimed at provision of networked information resources.

Not surprisingly, construction work was less common (and less time-intensive) of the two. This point is illustrated by Tables 6 & 7.

                  TABLE 6
Percent of Respondents and Average Number Hours/Week 
Spent in 1997 Using Internet Resources
---------------------------------------------------------------
E-mail           	92.0 %* 2.6 hrs/week** 	2.8 hrs/week***
News             	83.0	1.6		1.9
Mailing lists    	74.9	1.5		2.0
Data bases       	73.0	1.3		1.7
Archives         	70.8	1.1		1.6
Internet guides  	69.7	1.0		1.4
E-publications   	67.0	1.2		1.8
Corporate pages  	64.7	1.0		1.5
Administration   	63.0	1.0            	1.6
Personal pages   	59.1	1.0		1.7
Business         	53.0	0.9 		1.6
Internet studies 	51.6	0.9		1.7
---------------------------------------------------------------
Total 279 respondents 	       15.1 hrs/week**   
*   percent of respondents using the resource
**  average for all 279 respondents
*** average for those who were users



                TABLE 7
Percent of Respondents and Average Number Hours/Week 
Spent in 1997 Constructing/Maintaining Internet Resources
---------------------------------------------------------------
Personal pages   	31.8 %*	0.7 hrs/week**	2.0 hrs/week***
Internet studies        28.3	0.5		1.7
Mailing lists           22.9	0.4		1.7
E-publications          21.5	0.5		2.1
Corporate pages         20.7	0.5		2.2
Administration          19.7	0.5		4.1
Archives                18.2	0.4		1.7
Internet guides         13.6	0.4		2.7
Data bases              10.7	0.4		3.3
News                  	 8.6	0.2		2.2
Business                 7.1	0.1		1.5
---------------------------------------------------------------
Total 279 respondents		4.6 hrs/week**  
*   percent of respondents building the resource
**  average for all 279 respondents
*** average for those who were builders/maintainers

The data on construction of personal pages are congruent with the results of the Oct-Nov 1997 Survey (GVU 1997) where 10,108 participants reported that 46% of them have created a web page and where was found that the percentage of respondents creating web pages increases with the length of their online experience.

Conclusions

The three most popular professional uses of the Internet revolve around sending and receiving electronic mail (individual and list-mediated), and reading online news.

The three most popular Internet construction activities are those which involve development of personal Web pages, investigation of the Internet, and maintenance of various electronic mailing lists.

In sum, if we assume a 45 hour working week, it appears that in 1997 an average respondent spent roughly:

This means that, on average, during 1997, scholars who participated in our online survey spent approximately 43% of their office hours on working on the Net, and 57% on paper-based and face-to-face activities. Moreover, if we concentrate solely on people who actually worked with or made an active use of the Net (Tables 6 & 7, columns marked "***") the above values need to be revised upwards.

Finally, as it was already noted in Table 5, all above proportions are prone to evolve in the coming years towards the increased length of time dedicated to the use and development of the Net.

These findings are, of course, preliminary. Certainly, a more ambitious questionnaire, distributed to a much wider and truly random universe of respondents would be more informative.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to all Internet colleagues who kindly agreed to participate in the online survey, and to Olaf Ciolek and Monica Green for critical comments on the earlier versions of this document.

Notes

[1] The 53 responses from Australia comprised 24 responses from the ANU (20 which were prepared by the RSPAS' Faculty members).

[2] Data on the length of experience with the Internet include experience with other networks [e.g. IBM's E- mail and mailing lists network Bitnet (est.1981)]. The frequency distribution for the '10 years +' category is as follows: 10 yrs - 11 cases; 13 - 1; 14 - 1; 16 - 2, and finally 25 yrs - 1 case.
The first subsets of the future Internet were established under the name ARPANet between 1969 and 1972, or more than 26 years ago (Leiner and Cerf 1998), Tappendorf (1995).

[3] The frequency distribution for the '50 hours +' category is as follows: 52 hrs - 1 case; 55 - 1; 57 - 1; 60 - 1; 62 - 1; 63 - 1; 65 - 2; 76 - 1; 84 - 1; 87 - 1; 91 - 1, and finally 95 hrs - 1 case.
Some of the readers have commented that 95 hours of online work per week (13.6 hrs/day) is an incredibly large number of hours. I agree. However, it is also known that in France, in the late 1980s, some of the Minitel users were found to have used the network for up to 520 hours over a period of 1 month (or 17.3 hrs/day, 121.1 hrs/week), and the longest Minitel session have lasted for 74 hours (3.1 days) non-stop (Rheingold 1994:229).

References


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