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Demographic Assignment Form

Demographers study human populations: size, density, location, age, sex, race, occupation, and most anything else they can count. They aggregate and compare statistics. They visualize the trends on line graphs and bar charts.

The Census Bureau and a legion of academic researchers confirm each other's key trends. Then an organization's own market research can focus the aggregates to identify and characterize target customers.

Because digital information can be stored forever, searched, filtered, and compared, the Internet provides an unprecedented opportunity. Marketers can study online populations and target customers with pinpoint accuracy. The Web, measured since its beginnings in the early 90s, has accumulated a statistical base that is getting large enough to start showing trends. Continuing to compare them to traditional demographics further confirms the trends.

You will find answers to all the questions below on NUA's site. In fact, you will find several answers, none of which is the correct one. However, they tend to confirm each other within a certain range. You will also find surveys of non-U.S. populations. Take care to identify the survey population and the source. For the questions below, consider only the U.S.

This group from Ireland keeps track of hundreds of surveys worldwide. They also make inferences and draw conclusions. They don't have all the answers, but they have some great questions. I highly recommend this site and the weekly newsletter. NUA's motto: making free information pay.

If you can't find answers at NUA's site or if you want to try similar sites, try Relevant Knowledge and Georgia Tech. Twice a year, the folks at Georgia Tech survey the Internet. They look only at big issues, such as gender and browser type. They've been doing it for four years, so the trends are getting interesting to note.

The Web Marketing Information Center has a terrific collection of links to these and other demographic sites.

In the March 1998 Yahoo! Internet Life survey, Buffalo ranked 43rd on a list of most-wired cities -- right between Honolulu and Tulsa. We totaled under 20 points:

internet users	0
hosts per capita	0
domain density	0
backbone traffic	2.5
directory density	6
government / media	6
culture	0
high speed	0

The 0 doesn't mean we don't have any. It means that compared to the more wired cities, we don't have enough worth counting. Note that we get the backbone traffic because of the landline to Canada from the phone company switching office downtown. That is, Toronto sucks enough IP packets through Buffalo to put us into the article. Without Toronto, we would have fallen out of the top 50.

Demographic Assignment

Please complete this form and submit it by April 21, 1999.

Your Name

Please enter your name in the box at left.

Age

The post-WW2 Baby Boom is the most significant demographic feature by its sheer size: 75 million, or over 1/3 of the U.S. population. This bulge in age distribution leads growth strategies in industries serving age-specific markets. As boomers age -- and live longer -- marketers must follow.

How old are the wired? Are they older or younger than the population as a whole?

Gender

What is the gender distribution of the wired? What are the five-year trends?

The general population is half female and half male. Computers, however, have always been toys for boys. Look at the jargon: abort operation, kill file, execute code. They've done a great job making the tools powerful and fast. Now that non-computer science majors are using the tools, are women catching up?

Family Structure

The Leave-It-to-Beaver Good Ol' Days are over. In fact, they lasted for only thirty minutes once a week in the '50s, anyway. The U.S. has roughly 100 million households. Key trends: increasing age of those marrying delayed child-bearing remarriages more two-income families more non-family households

How many are wired? Using the list on the left, how do they compare to non-wired households?

Geography

Where do the wired live?

Americans are mobile. Key trends: more frequent moves Rustbelt to Sunbelt rural to urban urban to suburban

Education

Americans are becoming more educated and jobs more white-collar. Almost everyone graduates from high school and almost all of them go on to more education. However, about a quarter of adult Americans have a bachelor's degree. The mean age of a college student is 26. The economy is changing from a production orientation to a service orientation. Instead of being the world's muscle, we're becoming the world's brain. Lifelong learning is the new buzzword.

How much formal education do the wired have?

Ethnic Diversity

What is the racial distribution of the wired?

Of the 260 million Americans, 74% are white, 12% black, with the remaining 14% mostly Hispanic (22 million) and Asian (7 million). The Hispanic and Asian ethnic groups are the fastest-growing.

Overall

Based on the demographics you have found here, describe and characterize the wired. Does your characterization suggest anything about the wired that you can predict even though it's not among these statistics? Can you find a source to validate that prediction? Take another look at your responses. If you wish to make changes in any particular category, manually erase the words in the box. CAUTION: The "Reset This Page" button below also lets you erase, but it will erase the entire form, so be sure you want to do that before you use it. When you're satisfied with all your responses, click on "Submit This Page". If everything's okay, you'll see a response page and Bruce will get an email with your responses.

last update: July 22, 2000
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