Study: Net Tops in Research

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It’s no surprise that plenty of Americans do research using the Internet.
In fact, a new study finds the Web has become the predominant source for
many, a trend that’s also revolutionizing consumers’ use of libraries and
their expectations for e-government.

The new Pew Internet and American Life Project study found that more
people turn to the Internet — whether at home, at work, in libraries or
elsewhere — than to any other source of information, including experts and
family members.

Of those polled, 58 percent of people researching health-related,
educational, financial, legal or career advice turned to the Internet.

Experts — such as doctors, lawyers or financial experts — ranked
second, at 53 percent, while friends and family came in at 45 percent.

“The ascendance of the Internet has a demand-side dimension and a
supply-side dimension,” said Lee Rainie, director of the non-profit Pew
Internet and American Life Project. “On the demand side, we clearly see that
the spread of broadband has made the Internet an easy place for people to do
research when they face problems.

“On the supply side, the growth of content of all sorts makes the
Internet a more useful place to go exploring,” he said.

Rainie said the trend is supported by the efforts of most medical
institutions, government agencies, news organizations, libraries and
university, which seek to “display their expertise online.

“Search engines make that content much easier to find,” he added. “That
creates a kind of virtuous cycle where more people come online and they find
what they want, so that draws more people online and that creates incentives
for placing more content online. And on and on and on.”

Even those users without Internet access still make use of it for
research, after a fashion: The study found that as many as 27 percent of
“non-connected” consumers ask someone else to look up information for them
online.

The Internet’s importance is driving a number of new behaviors, the
survey found. For one thing, results indicated that users between 18 and 30
years old comprised the bulk (73 percent) of Americans heading to the
library to do research.

According to the survey, that fact is chiefly due to the easy access to
Internet resources they find there.

One result of consumers’ increasing reliance on the Internet for research
is that most also expect to be able to access to government documents
online, in lieu of receiving printed documents by mail or in person at
government offices.

The survey found that more than half of its respondents would prefer
using the Internet to interact with government. Those cases include school
or work research using government material (66 percent of participants),
personal tax questions (57 percent), getting a driver’s license or auto
permit (53 percent) and programs offered by agencies (55 percent).

The research findings skewed sharply along demographic lines. Younger
and higher-income Americans both were likely to turn first to the Internet
for information.

For “Generation Y” (18- to 30-year-old) survey respondents, 76 percent
said they used the Internet to research, versus 35 percent of survey
participants ages 62 to 73. Among respondents earning more than $40,000
annually, 70 percent used the Internet, compared to only 46 percent of those
earning less.

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