Saturday, May 21, 2011

Internet reach by age groups: Singapore politics and demographics

Given the importance of the internet-savvy voters, who are likely to be overwhelmingly pro-Alternative Parties, in Singapore politics, I tried to gauge the internet reach (in the area of news and political opinions, as distinct from social networking, gaming, etc) in Singapore by age groups.

In the following Tables 2a, 2b, "Citizens" is the number of Singapore citizens, as obtained from the 2010 Census (here). "Respondents" is the sum of the numbers of respondents to two recent online political surveys (by Yawning Bread (here) and Stephan Ortmann (here)).

[Excursus

Reinforcing the reliability of the surveys is the fact that they agree remarkably well in the age distribution of their respondents (see Table 1).

Table 1

Age

Yawning Bread

Ortmann

combined

21-30

47.54%

47.48%

47.52%

31-40

34.89%

34.43%

34.70%

41-50

12.25%

11.77%

12.05%

51-60

4.22%

5.44%

4.73%

61-70

0.87%

0.80%

0.84%

>70

0.23%

0.08%

0.17%

end of Excursus]

Dividing "Respondents" by "Citizens" is a measure of the internet reach (in the area of news and political opinions). All the other numbers in Tables 2a and 2b are obtained by proportional scaling of this measure.

The next four columns (A, B, C, D) in Tables 2a and 2b show the internet reach (in percentage), assuming that the internet reach of the 21-30 age group is 100.0%, 90.0%, 80.0%, and 70.0% respectively.

For example, if we assume that the internet reaches 90.0% of the 21-30 age group (Column B), then it reaches 64.6% of the 31-40 age group, and 18.6% of the 41-50 age group.

However, if we assume that the internet reaches 80.0% of the 21-30 age group (Column C), then it reaches 57.4% of the 31-40 age group, and 16.6% of the 41-50 age group.

Internet penetration rate

According to thisas of June 2010, Singapore has 3,658,400 Internet users, 77.82% of the population of 4.701,069.

[On Mar 31, 2011, there were 2,478,720 Singapore Facebook users, 52.3% of the population.]

However, for the purpose of assessing internet reach in the area of news and political opinions, this figure of 77.82% is far too high, and misleading.

Assuming a rather high figure of 90.0% internet reach for the 21-30 age group (Column B), the internet reach for the entire citizenry (aged 21 and above) is only 33.7%, or about 1 in 3 (last row of Column B).

Examples of my calculation:

Internet reach for 21-30 group is 1416/429861= 0.003294
Internet reach for 31-40 group is 1034/437136= 0.002365
71.8% in Column A is obtained by 0.002365/0.003294=0.7180
64.6% in Column B is obtained by 0.7180x0.9=0.6462


Table 2a: Internet Reach by Age Group


Age
(Year born)

Citizens

Respondents
           A

21-30(1980-89)

429,861

1,416

100.0%

31-40(1970-79)

437,136

1,034

71.8%

41-50(1960-69)

526,075

359

20.7%

51-60(1950-59)

515,963

141

8.3%

61-70(1940-49)

289,668

25

2.6%

>70 (<1940)

219,182

5

0.7%

Total (>20 y.o.)

2,417,885

2,980

37.4%




Table 2b: Internet Reach by Age Group


Age
(Year born)
        B       C        D

21-30 (1980-89)

90.0%

80.0%

70.0%

31-40 (1970-79)

64.6%

57.4%

50.3%

41-50 (1960-69)

18.6%

16.6%

14.5%

51-60 (1950-59)

7.5%

6.6%

5.8%

61-70 (1940-49)

2.4%

2.1%

1.8%

>70 (<1940)

0.6%

0.6%

0.5%

Total (>20 y.o.)

33.7%

29.9%

26.2%


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