New Internet Users
This report looks at how new Internet users behave online at two points along the Internet’s diffusion curve, one in November 1998 and the other in March 2000.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
What health seekers want and how they hunt for it* *This section is based largely on a special survey of 521 Internet users who go online for health care information. Health seekers are mostly interested in investigating specific physical and mental ailments and their searches often are tied to visits to the doctor. However, they […]
I. Introduction The Internet is not only one of the most rapidly disseminating technologies in history, it is also—to a degree different from other mass communications technologies—rapidly evolving as it disseminates. Today’s new adopters of the Internet face a range of options undreamed of by their predecessors of just a few years ago. With higher […]
Background Since the mid-1990s when the World Wide Web became a powerful part of America’s communications and information culture, there has been great concern that the nation’s racial minorities would be further disadvantaged because Internet access was not spreading as quickly in the African-American community as it was in the white community. Former Assistant Secretary […]
State of the Nation Al Gore is benefitting from two seemingly disparate trends — higher satisfaction with the state of the nation and increased worry about longer-term economic issues. A substantial dip in public satisfaction with national conditions, which was particularly evident in the spring and early summer, has reversed itself. More than half of […]
Tuned Out The presidential campaign is not on the minds of most Americans. Fewer than half of registered voters (46%) say they have thought a lot about the election. That represents a modest decline from a similar point in the campaign four years ago (when 50% said they gave the campaign a lot of thought) […]
Political analysts looking for historical parallels can’t decide whether the 2000 presidential race looks more like a rerun of 1988 or 1960. Will Vice President Al Gore take a page from Vice President George Bush’s play book, when he overcame a big deficit in the early polls and soundly defeated Michael Dukakis? At a comparable […]
Bush Bounces Back In the presidential race, key voting groups continue to shift back and forth between Bush and Gore, as the public is clearly having difficulty making up its mind about this contest. Some of the gains Gore made in the immediate aftermath of the primary season have since been reversed. Senior citizens rallied […]
Introduction and Summary A year after the massacre at Colorado’s Columbine High School, the vast majority of the public believes it is the responsibility of parents to ensure that such tragedies are not repeated. In fact, a plurality identifies poor parenting — not peer pressure or violence in the media — as the primary cause […]
There is a good deal of social science research now suggesting that people are not interested in learning about the inside baseball of politics, or being educated in the black arts of how to run campaigns. The survey data from this year tends to reinforce that. In October Americans told pollsters from the Pew Research […]