What percentage of U.S. adults have high-speed internet at home? Do they have a smartphone? Do they use social media?
Pew Research Center has been studying technology adoption for years by interviewing Americans by phone. However, starting with today’s publication, we will instead use the National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS) to report on these topics. The biggest difference is that NPORS participants are invited by mail and can complete a paper survey or online rather than by phone.
To explain the thinking behind this change and how it impacts our future efforts, here’s a conversation with Monica Anderson, Managing Director of Internet and Technology Research, and Researcher Colleen McClain . This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Pew Research Center has been tracking technology adoption in the United States for decades. Why is this area of research so important?
Anderson: We believe this research is fundamental to understanding the broader impact of the Internet, mobile technology, and social media on our society.
Americans have a wealth of digital tools to help them do everything from getting news to shopping to finding jobs. Researching how people go online, what devices they own, and what social media sites they use can help you understand how people experience the world around them. very important to do.
This research also supports our ongoing work on the digital divide, the disparity between those who have access to certain technologies and those who don’t. This shows where demographic differences exist, how they have changed over time, and how factors such as age, race, and income contribute.
Our research is an important reminder that some technologies, such as high-speed internet, remain out of reach for some Americans, especially those who are less affluent. In fact, our latest research shows that about 4 in 10 Americans living in low-income households do not have home broadband.
Why did your team switch from telephone surveys to National Public Opinion Reference Surveys (NPORS)?
McClain: The Internet has not only changed Americans’ daily lives, but it has also changed the way researchers study its effects. The changes we’ve made this year will continue to explore technology adoption.
We began tracking Americans’ technology use in 2000. At that time, about half of Americans were online, and only 1% had broadband at home. Like much of the survey research world, we rely on telephone polls for these studies, an approach that has served us well for decades.
But in recent years, the proportion of people responding to telephone polls has plummeted, and these types of polls have become more expensive. At the same time, online surveys are becoming more popular and pollsters are diversifying their methods. This shift in polling is reflected in the online America Trends panel, which is working well for much of the center’s U.S. research work.
However, there are some caveats. Online-only surveys aren’t always the best approach when measuring certain types of data points. This includes measuring how many people aren’t using technology in the first place.
To address these types of challenges, join the National Opinion Reference Poll launched by the Center in 2020. You can choose to complete our survey on paper or online, making it especially suitable for hearing from Americans who don’t use the internet, aren’t familiar with technology, or don’t want to respond online. . Therefore, it is suitable for studying the digital divide. NPORS also achieves higher response rates than telephone polls.
Moving technology implementation research to NPORS will ensure that we are up to date with the latest advances in the Center’s methods toolkit, while keeping quality at the forefront of this important work.
The Internet has not only changed Americans’ daily lives, but it has also changed the way researchers study its effects. The changes we’ve made this year will continue to explore technology adoption.
Colleen McClain
Are the old and new approaches equivalent?
McClain: We took several steps to ensure that the NPORS survey results were as comparable as possible to previous telephone surveys. We knew that it would be difficult, and in some cases impossible, to directly compare the results of studies using different modes, namely interview methods. How a survey is conducted can affect how people respond to the questions and who responds in the first place. These are known as “mode effects.”
To minimize the impact of this change, we started doing what we do best: collecting data.
Around the same time we conducted telephone polls on technology adoption in 2019 and 2021, we also conducted several studies using a different approach. We didn’t want to change modes right away, we wanted to understand how changing our approach would impact the data we were collecting about how Americans were using technology. It is.
Running these tests helped us narrow down our choices and fine-tune the design of NPORS. Using his 2019 and his 2021 phone data collected as points of comparison, we worked over the next few years to ensure the respondent’s experience was as similar as possible across modes.
What does your new approach mean for your ability to talk about change over time?
McClain: We carefully considered the possibility of mode effects when deciding how to talk about the changes seen in this year’s findings. Despite all the work we’ve done to make our approaches as comparable as possible, we wanted to be cautious.
For example, we paid close attention to the size of the observed changes. In some cases, the numbers for 2021 and 2023 will be about the same, and even without a mode transition, the numbers will not be very large.
We also thoroughly investigated the notable differences. For example, 21% of Americans said they use TikTok in a 2021 phone survey, but that has now increased to 33% in a paper/online survey. Going back to previous test runs, we were able to conclude that it is unlikely that this change was entirely due to the mode. We believe that it also reflects real change over time.
Although the change in mode makes it more difficult than usual to talk about trends, we believe that the change in approach is a net positive for the quality of work. NPORS will ensure our future is in place.
How do you communicate this change in mode in your published work?
McClain: It’s important to us that our readers can quickly and easily understand the changes and when they happened.
In some cases, we will display paper/online survey results side-by-side with data points from previous telephone surveys. The trend graphs in our reports show mode transitions as dotted lines to draw attention to changes in approach. In the fact sheet, vertical lines represent the same thing. In both cases, the information is also provided in footnotes below the graph itself.
Elsewhere in our publication, we take a more cautious approach and focus on new data rather than trends.
Did you need to change the way you asked your survey questions?
McClain: Writing questions that respond to the ever-changing nature of technology has always been a challenge, and mode shifts have made this even more complex. For example, previous telephone surveys were conducted by interviewers, whereas online or paper surveys do not require you to speak to someone. We had to adjust the questions to keep the experience as consistent as possible across new papers and online surveys.
For example, consider who subscribes to home broadband. We knew that in the new mode we wouldn’t have an interviewer probing and checking someone’s responses, so we tested different options ahead of time to ensure we were collecting quality data.
In this case, we gave people the opportunity to say “I don’t know” or fill in a different type of internet connection if the internet connection we provided didn’t fit their situation at all. We’ve also updated the internet connection examples in the questions to keep pace with evolving technology.
What are the most impressive findings from the latest research?
Anderson: There are several interesting aspects of our latest research, but two findings related to social media particularly stand out.
The first is the rise of TikTok. One-third of U.S. adults (including about 6 in 10 adults under 30) use this video-based platform. These numbers have increased significantly since 2021, the last time we asked these questions. And another study by the center found that TikTok is increasingly becoming a news source for Americans, especially young people.
The second question is how dominant Facebook will remain. Most adults (about two-thirds) say they use the site, although usage among U.S. teens has declined sharply. And this share has remained relatively stable over the past decade or so. YouTube is the only platform asked about in this study and is more widely used than Facebook.
These findings confirm why it’s so important to continually track your use of technology, especially specific sites and apps. The online environment can evolve rapidly. As researchers studying these platforms, it is important to have a positive mindset. As we continue to explore new platforms, we will track long-standing sites to see how their usage changes, or stays the same, over time.
If you would like to know more about the National Public Opinion Reference Survey, please Read the NPORS fact sheet. To learn more about how Americans use technology, read our new report:
anna jackson I am an editorial assistant at the Pew Research Center.