Survey

 This online survey aims to examine the concerns about Internet usage expressed by standard Internet users. In addition, the survey records attitudes of Internet users as to the possibility of using alternative Internet platforms and also community networks. Such information is considered significant for community networks themselves as well as for policy-makers and regulators. Deliverable D5.2 explained the original design of the survey, its aims, questions and structure. Deliverable D5.3 described the pilot and implementation phase of the survey. The survey has drawn reponses from 1000 participants and the results are presented in the following sections.

Internet Usage and Digital Skills - Section B

Section B of the questionnaire is about Internet usage and digital skills. Internet usage comprises a number of different dimensions, namely: frequency of Internet usage for particular activities, type of provision of Internet service, as well as an evaluation of the availability and quality of the signal that the user is likely to have when on the move. These are captured by questions QB1-QB6.

To measure digital skills, we use a Likert-type format which provides a good overview of the skills of the user (Question QB8). 

The relevant results to questions QB1-QB6 and QB8 can be found  here:

Concerns - Section C

Section C of the questionnaire is about concerns of Internet users on a number of areas, such as privacy, advartisements, monopolies and electrnoci democracy, as documented in D5.2. More specifically:

Question QC1A asks whether the user has experienced privacy violations; certain options are provided.

QC2A to QC4 in our survey addresses privacy concerns.

Questions QC5, QC7, QC8 and QC9 are set to provide a measure of advertising and commercialisation concerns. 

Questions QC10 to QC13 are on monopolies, and examine attitudes towards the dominant presence of an Internet service provider, social networking site, or search engine (questions QC10 to QC13). 

The last set of questions in section C, relate to the theme of Internet governance and electronic democracy, and consists of questions on: taxation of large Internet corporations, equality of access and skills (digital divide), unequal online visibility on social networks, access to online content (questions QC15 to QC18). 

The relevant results can be found here:

 Community Networks - Section D

Section D seeks to capture perceptions of users about community networks and the extent to which they could provide alternatives to their concerns. This is a demanding request on the respondents as not many of them are expected to know what community networks are. We have therefore provided a short description before asking two related questions: the first (question QD1), is about the attitudes of the respondents vis-a`-vis the potential of community networks to address user concerns (this can be loosely seen as a measure of attitudes towards sustainability of community networks); the second (question QD2), is whether the respondents would themselves consider switching to a community network. We have kept the questions short so as to give the opportunity to the respondents to provide their insights.

 The relevant results can be found here:

Demographics - Section E

The last section of the survey contains demographic question to create a profile of the user. Questions QE1-QE5 enquire about age, gender, educational attainment, and occupational classification. contains the graphs that provide the breakdown of the 1000 respondents according to the above criteria. QE6 asks about country of residence.  Question QE7 asks about the place the respondent resides (e.g. urban, rural etc.). QE8 asks whether the respondent has participated in local and social activities and organisations. 

The relevant results can be found here:

Further plots

We have produced an autocorrelation plot to identify possible correlations between the answers provided to different questions. The plot is amenable to the following observations as shown inside this section.