Photo courtesy of Flickr user mlibrarianus

This paper presents various characteristics of public access ICT users. While earlier research suggests that public access ICT users are young, male, and only play games, the Global Impact Study has found that a myriad of user profiles exist. Looking at a variety of variables, from gender to income and education to age, this working paper highlights the diversity found among public access ICT users.

Abstract

Based on a survey of public access ICT users in five countries, this working paper outlines some basic characteristics of users – their demographics, history of using ICTs and reasons for using public access ICTs. This preliminary analysis indicates that while a large proportion of public access ICT users are young (40% under 20 years old), male (65%), students (44%), and have at least secondary education (82%), there is a fair amount of diversity in user characteristics. The significance of public access ICTs is demonstrated in the finding that most users’ first contact with computers (50%) and the internet (62%) was in a public access venue, and even those who have access at home patronize venues for other reasons, such as better equipment, faster connections, being with friends, or having access to help from venue staff.

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Full report: Public access to ICTs: Sculpting the profile of users

Recommended Citation

Sciadas, G., with Lyons, H., Rothschild, C., & Sey, A. (2012). Public access to ICTs: Sculpting the profile of users. Seattle: Technology & Social Change Group, University of Washington Information School.

Keywords

public access, users, cybercafés, internet cafes, libraries, telecenters, internet, ICT, ICTD

Technology & Social Change Group (TASCHA) research seminars offer students an opportunity to gain practical research experience with one of our many projects investigating the design, use, and impact of information and communication technologies in communities facing social and economic challenges.

The Winter 2012 section (held at the University of Washington Information School) — course number INFX 571 C/D — focuses on analysis of data from the Global Impact Study. The Global Impact Study comprises a variety of research activities, including a comprehensive set of surveys of public access venue owners/operators, users, and non-users at more than a thousand public access venues in Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, Ghana, and the Philippines. The result is a rich source of data on demographics, usage needs/behaviors, and services in these countries. The seminar will focus on analysis of the survey data and provide opportunities to participate in different aspects of the project from crunching numbers to reviewing related literature. This is a great opportunity to learn and apply quantitative methods in a real research context with real data. The seminar will be led by George Sciadas (Statistics Canada), Hil Lyons (UW Center for Statistical Consulting), and Araba Sey (TASCHA).

Overview of the talk

The Global Impact Study surveys were designed to collect comparable data on uses and outcomes of public access ICT use in five countries on three continents. This TASCHA Talk will reflect on a range of research design and project management issues encountered during various stages of the survey project.

For more information about this talk and other TASCHA Talks, visit the TASCHA website.

Survey team members working on survey reports; photo courtesy of Melody Clark

We will soon release three reports based on top-level analysis of user and venue survey data from Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, and the Philippines. Based on analysis conducted by the survey team, the three reports are as follows:

1. Profile of public access venue users: This report covers high-level findings about who public access venue users are based on the survey data. From the level of ICT skills of users and employment status to age, income, and other socio-economic demographic information, the report provides an overview of  public access venue users.
2. Public access venue uses and services: This report covers the services public access venues offer, such as ICT training and printing. Also described in this report is the accessibility of public access venues and how users make use of these venues. Factors examined in this report include why people use public access venues, the types of information they seek, and what services are most used at venues.
3. Perceived impacts of public access venues: This report covers perceived impacts, direct and indirect, of public access venues. This report includes analysis of how users perceive the impacts of public access venue use, both on them and on the community, in six domains of interest: communication & leisure, culture & language, education, employment & income, governance, and health.

Draft versions of these three reports were presented at the June 2011 workshop to solicit feedback for revisions to the reports. The survey team is currently working on finalizing the reports for review, and once the review is complete, we will post the reports on this website. We anticipate the reports will be posted sometime later this fall.

We plan for three main phases of analysis. The first phase was recently completed and culminated in a preliminary summary of the user survey data from Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile and the Philippines, which was used as the basis for the survey data analysis workshop held on April 18-19.  The second phase of analysis aims to produce three basic descriptive reports on the profile of public access ICT users, services provided and usage of public access ICT venues, and perceived impacts of using public access ICTs. The third phase will comprise more complex analyses as well as blending of data from the user, venue and non-user surveys.

Survey data analysis workshop; photo courtesy of Melody Clark

In our workshop on data integration, we developed a data integration framework, demonstrating how we will tie together the data and findings from all of our research activities. The framework will provide an analytical lens for interpreting our data and conceptualizing the impacts of public access ICTs. We also identified the main objectives for a project-wide data integration workshop which we will hold at the end of June 2011. The June workshop will bring together our research partners to share findings from their in-depth studies and local country contexts, review data from all components of the project research, and identify streams of analysis and themes for our research reports.

We would like to thank Francois Bar, Mike Crandall, Hil Lyons and Yuan Chiam from the Center for Statistical Consulting, and George Sciadas, as well as Andy Gordon and Beth Kolko for their invaluable insights and participation during last week’s workshops. Thanks also to all our research partners for your updates and reports, which were valuable inputs for the workshops.

Ghana country researchers practicing with survey instruments. Photo courtesy of Araba Sey, 2011.

While there is a fairly significant public access ICT industry in Ghana, there is limited readily available information on the types, location and distribution of public access ICT venues. Project implementation in Ghana will begin in February with inventory data collection to provide context for development of sampling strategies for the venue, user, and nonuser surveys.

Users at Busy Internet in Ghana in 2009. Photo courtesy of Araba Sey.

The Global Impact Study is pleased to announce that we have added Ghana as the fifth country to the user, venue, and non-user surveys and the sixth country for inventory data collection. The country research team will be led by Godfred Frempong of the Science and Technology Policy Research Institute (STEPRI). The surveys and inventory activities in Ghana over the next year will expand the geographical representation of the Global Impact Study by including a country in Africa.

As with the other country research teams, the team in Ghana will conduct surveys on the impact  of public access ICT, as well as collect and report inventory data of public access ICT venues throughout the country. The user, venue, and non-user surveys and inventory data collection in Ghana will begin in early 2011.

We look forward to working with the STEPRI team, and hope you’ll join us in welcoming them to the Global Impact Study.

Data collection is scheduled to conclude at the end of October. Once the data have been cleaned and we have completed our preliminary analysis we will make portions of the data publicly available. The survey instruments will be posted on this site in the coming weeks.

With the data from this survey, we hope to gain a greater understanding of the differences and similarities between public access ICT users and non-users, reasons for non-use, and the extent to which use of public access ICTs might give users unique advantages over non-users. We have updated our original survey research questions to include the non-user element.

Survey Research Questions

1. What is the demographic profile of public access ICT users and non-users?

2. Apart from public access ICTs, what other information and communication resources do public access ICT users and non-users have?

3. How do public access ICT users and non-users perceive their ICT skills and what are their ICT use comfort levels?

4. Why do people go to public access ICT venues?

5. What are the reasons for non-use of public access ICT venues?

6. What do people do at public access venues?

7. How accessible are public access ICT venues and services to different types of populations?

8. How do the design, services and operations of public access ICTs affect usage patterns?

9. What do public access ICT users see as the impacts of using public access ICTs?

10. Do non-users see an impact from not using public access ICTs?

11. What outcomes can be associated with public access ICT use in different domains?

12. Are the outcomes non-users experience from using non-public access information and communication resources similar to the outcomes experienced by users of public access ICTs?

13. Does public access ICT use have indirect impacts?

14.What is the value of public access ICTs to users?

15.  What is the cost of providing public access ICTs?

 The teams completed cognitive testing at the end of May.  Their reports draw attention to a number of areas where the survey questions could be improved. We can attribute the comprehension issues identified in the testing to a variety of factors including:

• Inappropriate respondent to answer the question (e.g. lacks knowledge to answer questions about a venue’s computer equipment or balance sheet).
• Use of technical jargon (e.g. log server).
• Inaccurate characterization of situation (e.g. asking for a single fee amount for internet access whereas venue has a tiered fee system).
• Inapplicability of question to respondent (e.g. does not engage in the activity a question asks about).
• Too many answer categories, making it diffcult to remember.
• Confusing wording of question.
• Complicated nature of information requested (e.g. respondent needs to estimate budget allocation to different venue expenses).
• Complex question structure (e.g. requires answers in multiple layers).
• Inaccurate translation from English to local language.

Some of these issues require revising the questionnaire, some require revising the language translations, and others require developing strategies to make the survey easier to implement (e.g. using visual aids for answer categories). We paid particular attention to those issues that occurred in more than one country, while trying to find appropriate compromises for items that were specific to individual countries. The Survey Working Group has revised the instrument and survey design where needed, taking into account recommendations supplied by the  survey implementation teams. The instruments are now moving on to field testing.

1. Cognitive testing to check for comprehension problems with the survey questions.

2. Field testing to check for potential problems in the entire survey adminstration process (e.g. structure, content, flow and length of the questionnaires) as well as  the actual data collected.

We begin with cognitive testing on a small scale, after which we make revisions to the survey instruments to address issues revealed by the cognitive tests. Next we carry out the field testing with a larger number of locations and respondents.

This strategy enables us to use the results of the cognitive testing to eliminate comprehension of survey questions as a potential major source of delays during field testing. For example, we are likely to get a more accurate estimate of the length of the surveys if interviewers don’t have to spend too much time trying to explain what specific survey questions mean.

Our survey implementation teams have been given detailed guidance in our survey testing guidelines.

Development of the surveys has been a difficult process of trade-offs. Most people who have participated in surveys on ICT use can probably identify with the feeling that these surveys are often extremely long, some taking up to two hours to complete. And researchers will admit that once the data is collected, a large proportion of it goes unused, it is never analyzed. We’ve had to make some difficult choices about the scope of our surveys of public access ICT venue users and operators. There are several relevant issues that we would like to explore, from the demographics of public access users to the impact of usage on users’ health, education and participation in civic life. The first draft of the user survey compiled over 60 pages of questions on several of these interesting issues - a survey that could potentially take more than three hours to complete. Since our goal is to keep the surveys less than one hour long, we needed a systematic approach to decide which questions would be included in the final version. To do this we prioritized the research questions we would investigate with the surveys, developed hypotheses to go with each research question, and identified potential indicators to test each hypothesis. This process enabled us to select questions for the instruments that are directly related to our research questions, and provided a means to make the hard decisions of eliminating questions that are “interesting” but fall out of the scope we have defined for the surveys.

The research questions for the surveys are:

1. What is the demographic profile of public access ICT users?
2. Apart from public access ICTs, what other information and communication resources do public access ICT users have?
3. How do public access ICT users perceive their ICT skills and what are their ICT use comfort levels?
4. Why do people go to public access ICT venues?
5. What do people do at public access ICT venues?
6. How accessible are public access ICT venues and services to different types of populations?
7. How do the design, services, and operations of public access ICTs affect usage patterns?
8. What types of venue policies do public access ICT operators view as inhibiting their ability to provide information and services that they believe users want?
9. What do public access users see as the impacts of using public access?
10. What outcomes can be associated with public access ICT use in different domains?
11. Does public access ICT use have indirect impacts?
12. What is the value of public access ICT to users?
13. What is the cost of providing public access ICTs?

The survey instruments are in the final stages of editing before being translated into local languages and piloted. Results from the pilots will inform the final survey instruments, which will be rolled out in early 2010 in Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, and the Philippines. We are looking forward to sharing the final instruments and additional insights about our survey development process.