TidBITS 2007 Reader Survey Results: Who Are You?

Adam,

The marginal distributions are one thing, but I want to see the conditional distributions.

That is, the breakdowns of activities by age and by profession. The breakdown of profession by age. The breakdown of budget by age and profession, etc..

If you have the data file, I can spit that stuff out using SPSS in about 5 seconds. That is, if the survey software you used keeps the individual records, of course.

--

=Alex Hoffman Leadership Policy & Politics Teachers College, Columbia University

At 12:20 PM -0700 3/12/07, macmaxbh wrote:
>As one of the four under twenty-one who answered the survey, I find
>it disappointing more people my age don't read TidBITS, since I find
>it to be excellently written and a great source of information!
>Perhaps I should advertise TidBITS in my other Mac hangouts as a
>"hidden gem of Mac news". Also, while I do "understand" 1337sp33k and
>many SMS abbreviations, I heartily recommend you continue eschewing
>them for proper English, like I do (except jokingly).

Hey, nice to hear from one of our very few younger readers! Please do
let your friends know about TidBITS. I'm hoping that our upcoming
redesign will also do a lot for making TidBITS more attractive to
younger people, since it will look a bit more modern.

I don't know for sure if Dan Pourhadi completed the survey, but he's
under 21 too, and his writing has been a great addition. Now if only
he didn't have college in the way of doing more. :)


At 12:20 PM -0700 3/12/07, Alexander Hoffman wrote:
>The marginal distributions are one thing, but I want to see the
>conditional distributions.
>
>That is, the breakdowns of activities by age and by profession. The
>breakdown of profession by age. The breakdown of budget by age and
>profession, etc..
>
>If you have the data file, I can spit that stuff out using SPSS in
>about 5 seconds. That is, if the survey software you used keeps the
>individual records, of course.

Hmm, looks like I do have that information after all, though I'm
hitting an error exporting it (possibly more data than was expected).
Once I get that fixed I'll pass it over to you. :)

cheers... -Adam

An observation on the high % of retired respondents - retired people
tend to have more time to reply to surveys.

Marilyn

Alexander Hoffman wrote:
>
> That is, the breakdowns of activities by age and by profession. The
> breakdown of profession by age. The breakdown of budget by age and
> profession, etc..

What I think is missing in most surveys these days is are you a single,
couple, or family? The correlations due to that would be very
interesting to me and I think are more significant than many, especially
politicians, want to deal with. Especially if you add age ranges.

Adam, your lifestyle has not changed one bit since your son showed
up. Right? :)

With me one thing I realized the recently was that my involvement with
the local Mac user group dropped after my kids got past the toddler
stage. With the meetings 20 miles away, it just wasn't worth the effort
to attend. Given sports, school, and other activities that occur as your
children grow up.

>Alexander Hoffman wrote:
>>
>>That is, the breakdowns of activities by age and by profession. The
>>breakdown of profession by age. The breakdown of budget by age and
>>profession, etc..

I've sent Alex the raw data; we'll see what his SPSS-fu can do.

>What I think is missing in most surveys these days is are you a single,
>couple, or family? The correlations due to that would be very
>interesting to me and I think are more significant than many, especially
>politicians, want to deal with. Especially if you add age ranges.

In the context of helping us figure out editorial directions, though,
I'm not sure how much of a difference household size would imply.

>Adam, your lifestyle has not changed one bit since your son showed
>up. Right? :)

Oh, no, not one bit, at least as far as I can remember. :)

>With me one thing I realized the recently was that my involvement with
>the local Mac user group dropped after my kids got past the toddler
>stage. With the meetings 20 miles away, it just wasn't worth the effort
>to attend. Given sports, school, and other activities that occur as your
>children grow up.

User groups definitely see this sort of thing happening all the time.

cheers... -Adam