GOODIES TO GO! ™
September 27, 1999 — Newsletter #47
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Greetings, Weekend Silicon Warriors,
September 23 marked double digit days until the year 2000.
We’re under 100 to go. Be afraid. Be very afraid…or don’t.
Did you hear…
>There’s a bill before Congress that, if signed, would allow
law enforcement the ability to search not only your house,
but now your computer. The bill would allow those who possess
a warrant to override passwording and encryption to get at
information. The reasoning is that too many people are using
their computers to commit crimes. You have the right to
remain cyber…
>eBay caught heck for selling stock. Dave Tumey put a 10%
stake in a tech company up for auction on the site over the
last weekend. The starting asking price was $599,000.00.
Tumey said he got permission to sell the stock, but eBay
later balked when a news organization began to call and ask
why stock was being sold. Tumey had his trading fee refunded.
>Farmers are on the Net! A survey of those who work the soil
found that the number of farmers who use the Web for
information regarding their business jumped from 13 to 27
percent. Montana is the most Web savvy with over a third of
their farmers online.
>Hey! Did you hear that the Navy thinks we’re sunk? According
to their research, 60% or around 400 major cities will have
Y2K problems with their water and electrical systems. When
the story broke, apparently heavy pressure was brought to
bear and now I read that the Navy isn’t so sure they got it
right. Well, I just hope that their retraction is right
rather than their first statements. You can’t pressure a
computer into working to avoid embarrassment.
Now onto today’s topic…
I am in a conundrum.
I want to do something, but I don’t know how.
Did you see the story in mid-August about Internet Addiction?
This study claimed that 6% of all people who use the Net are
addicted.
I read the results of the study and, at first, thought that
this was something we should be concerned about. Then I ran
into how the survey was conducted and immediately lost faith.
David Greenfield, who created the study, gathered responses
from over 17,000 people who filled out an online
questionnaire. The results, according to Greenfield, reported
that 6% of those who answered his survey are addicted. He
then claimed that if you apply that 6% figure to the general
population, we’re talking millions of people who are
technically addicted to the Web.
Scary, right? Welllll, let’s look at the survey itself. First
off, the survey was online so users had to know where to find
it. That requires someone who is already Web savvy which
leans toward people who work with the Net regularly.
Next, the majority of those who answered the survey did so
because of a report run on ABC Television News. This, again,
suggests that those who are more interested in the Web were
answering the survey. Do you jump to see a Web site when it
comes up on the TV?
Finally, the survey was a series of yes/no questions. As I
understand it, there were only 10 questions and if you
answered yes to half of them, you could be addicted.
So, what does this mean? To me it means that the data is
skewed toward the result. The method of drawing people to
the survey was skewed to get those who might be addicted
instead of a random picking of the general population.
Secondly, I don’t know that 10 this-or-that questions can
qualify someone as “addicted.”
Bottom line: I don’t believe the results of the survey are
representative of the general population. Do I believe Net
Addiction exists? You bet, but 6% of the general population?
I don’t think it’s nearly that high.
Now that I’ve said that, let me comment to Dr. Greenfield
himself. Good job! You took a shot at surveying what must be
the most difficult group of people to solidify… Internet
users. I feel for the guy. He knows the drawbacks of the
study, I’m sure, and wishes he could have avoided them. But
how? That’s the question I am now fighting with.
I (along with EarthWeb and Macmillan) am going to undertake
a survey on the Web. My big question is, how can I give
everyone a fair shot at answering the survey?
Those who use the Internet make up a very interesting cluster
of people. It would be great if we, the researchers of the
world, could somehow survey them correctly.
But how?
It’s a little more than just posting a survey and hoping
people come by. Let me tell you why. When you perform research
on a group of people, like the person did above, you want
that group of people to be representative of the larger
population. That way you can say, with a degree of certainty,
that this group feels this way, thus the population probably
feels this way.
In order to get that degree of certainty, you have to perform
what is known as a random sample. Everyone in the population
will have an equal shot at getting picked.
That’s the rub of doing research on the Internet. How on
earth will you make sure that all people have an equal shot
at answering your survey? You can’t randomly choose e-mail
addresses like you can generate random phone numbers. You
can’t get a list of all those on the Web, like you could a
corporation’s employees. Even if you could, the number of
people on the Web is ever-increasing in size. How would you
keep up with it?
Come to think of it, you can’t set out to contact people
randomly at all. They have to contact you.
Every time I see a survey done on the Web, the results are
always skewed because by posting a survey to the Web, a
researcher immediately sets up a process whereby respondents
are scooped up as they go by rather than chosen because they
might be representative. It’s frustrating, to say the least.
But I’m going to try it. I will put together a survey created
to gather as much clean information about a subject as
possible. I’ll post the survey on the Goodies site, as well
as other great EarthWeb sites. I’ll advertise on search
engines for people to come and answer the survey. I’ll take
steps to keep someone from answering twice. I’ll try to
create a volume of data so large that even though some skew
may occur, somewhere inside… the truth will out. A simple
volume of data that leans one way or the other will grow out
of the responses and I will lay it out and proclaim it as
the general thinking of the Internet population.
I will compile the data which will help people do something
better and perhaps allow for a larger share of the population
to be surveyed by the next person.
Then some guy who writes a newsletter will tear it apart.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
And that’s that. Thanks for reading. It’s a weekly outlet
that I enjoy putting together.
Joe Burns, Ph.D.
And Remember: “Now is the time for all good men to come to
the aid of their party.” If you’ve taken a typing class,
you know that little ditty. It came from Charles Weller who
created it as a drill. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t
carry every letter on the keyboard (no Z or Q). In later
typing manuals the line was changed to: “Now is the time for
all good men to come to the aid of their country.” The reason
for the change was because in this form it fills out a perfect
70-letter line if you put the period at the end.