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A Survey on Internet Habits
We asked 68 NUS students about their Internet habits. From the findings, we hope to find out how a fraction of undergraduates in NUS, specifically residents in King Edward VII Hall and students in Philosophy Honours class, use the Internet. The sample population>>
Here's the results we received:
1) Please list your 3 frequently visited websites
2)What
information do you look for with search engines (multiple answers)?
More:
4) Internet habits of users in other countries
| An overwhelming 33% indicate that their area of interests lie in entertainment. Compare this to the web sites concerning political (2%) and academic- related (12%) issues, and news (9%), which make up for less than 20% of the findings. And these are the web sites which civil group interests would most likely to appear! |
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| A large pool of people (32%) has listed search engines as one of their frequently visited web sites. It is obvious that the Internet users' interest is predominantly leisure. On the other hand, politics has fared the worst as the type information attained from search engines, barely even hitting the 10% mark. Therefore, it is safe to conclude that the Internet is a poor medium to promote civic awareness. |
| 35% of the undergraduates surveyed would take part in online discussion forums whereas a majority of 65% would not. As the participants were not required to specify the issues addressed in the discussion forums, would it be too presumptuous to say that they are largely leisure or entertainment related? Even if we assume that the discussions are of a civic nature, they are not popular among Internet users. It seems that civil group interests would be better served when they are addressed in a physical realm, due to concerns such as responsibility and accountability. Thus we ask the question: Is a vibrant cyber civil society viable? |
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The sample is mostly taken from King Edward VII Hall where Internet connection is free. 43 who took part in survey were from different faculties, aged 19-23 and we had a healthy mix of gender. 25 were from the Philosophy honours class. According to the Central Limit Theorem, once the sample size is big enough (about 30), the distribution will have a mean equal to the population mean. Though the survey is limited in scope and cannot be extended to the whole population of Singapore, it nevertheless merits some attention. |
| Average age of respondents: 33 Female: 35% Male: 65%
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Internet Usage Habits |
| 93% of respondents use their web browser more
than once a day 56% use it more frequently than 4 times a day 36% use the web 1-4 times a day 7% use it less frequently than once a day What do users access on the net?: 45% reported they have never accessed a newsgroup (or only have a few times) 20% use newsgroups once a week 20% use newsgroups once a day 40% look for reference information weekly 30% look for reference information daily over 45% have never joined a chat group 7% chat daily Primary use of web browser (multiple selections were made by each
respondent): |
