Pew Research Center survey on American reading habits

[Barty]

http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/09/0...to-audio-books

A few highlights

- 73% of Americans read at least one book in any format during last year, largely unchanged since 2012
- 65% read at least one print book, 28% ebook, 14% audiobook
- 38% read print exclusively, 6% ebook exclusively
- E-book readership increased by 11-percentage points between 2011 and 2014 (from 17% to 28%) but has seen no change in the last two years.
- from 2011 to 2016 share of reading on tablets increased from 4% to 15%, on phones from 5% to 13%, on dedicated e-readers decreased slightly from 8% to 7%.

-

[Cinisajoy]

Please note: This was a very small survey. Note: they asked for the youngest adult at home.
It looks like this was done by cold calling numbers.
May or may not be accurate.
I have included part of page 3 of the report.

"The analysis in this report is based on a Pew Research Center survey conducted March 7-April 4, 2016, among a national sample of 1,520 adults, 18 years of age or older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Fully 381 respondents were interviewed on a landline telephone, and 1,139 were interviewed on a cellphone, including 636 who had no landline telephone. The survey was conducted by interviewers at Princeton Data Source under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. A combination of landline and cellphone random-digit-dial samples were used; both samples were provided by Survey Sampling International. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. Respondents in the landline sample were selected by randomly asking for the youngest adult male or female who was at home. Interviews in the cellphone sample were conducted with the person who answered the phone, if that person was 18 years of age or older. "

[fjtorres]

Of course, by targeting 18 year olds preferentially they tended to interview students (instead of the parents) whose reading tends to be in print.

No, no bias at all.

[SteveEisenberg]

Pew is a respected polling organization which rates better than Gallup:

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/

I prefer reading eBooks on eInk. This puts me in the minority that, it now appears, will continue to be a minority for many years. There's nothing wrong with being in a minority.

[Phogg]

Pew is only respected in some quarters.

It was originally founded by the Tribune corporation as "Tribune Research" to produce push polls for the Tribune line of newspapers. Their methodology was considered shoddy by those of us outside of journalism profession, but the Chicago Tribune loved having an in-house organization that could engineer data to back up anything they decided to print.

The name was changed to Pew Research some years after the parent corporation spun the research division off as a separate entity. The corporate history was recounted on the Pew website until about 2008.

You will tend to find journalists touting Pew Research because it is a corporation originally founded by and for the profession.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Pew is a respected polling organization which rates better than Gallup:

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/

I prefer reading eBooks on eInk. This puts me in the minority that, it now appears, will continue to be a minority for many years. There's nothing wrong with being in a minority.

Respected in what way?
The fact is the people in the Gallup polls all signed up for it.
Pew apparently just cold calls. How is that better?

By the way: the questions are loaded on most of their polls. They have caught me a time or two.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Respected in what way?
The fact is the people in the Gallup polls all signed up for it.
Pew apparently just cold calls. How is that better?

By the way: the questions are loaded on most of their polls. They have caught me a time or two.

Yeah. Loaded.
As in, in a household of multiple readers, who do they interview? Mom? Dad? No. The kid.

Given the known biases by age, focusing on the youngest adult in the family will unavoidably skew the results towards print. (Textbooks!)

Similarly, the focus on single-book readers without context (was that one book read a regular ocurrence or an accident, was it choice or homework?) biases the results towards the practices of students and casual readers rather than regular book buyers.

It's a meaningless report.

[Alpha o]

It would be meaningless. Most who answer the phone to a pollster just hang up.

You can have caller ID and call blocking on any phone.

Any poll can be skewed.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

This was a very small survey.

1,520 live calls is more than most polls.

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

they asked for the youngest adult at home.

In the 25 percent that was land-line calls, yes.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Similarly, the focus on single-book readers without context (was that one book read a regular occurrence or an accident, was it choice or homework?) biases the results towards the practices of students and casual readers rather than regular book buyers.

What about non-casual readers who use libraries almost exclusively?

This wasn't a study geared towards people who market novels. If someone starts a trade organization and funds a study that focuses on the kind of readers you think can be your direct or indirect customers, we can have a thread on that. Maybe we already have!

Originally Posted by Alpha o

Any poll can be skewed.

And any umpire can be played.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Yeah. Loaded.
As in, in a household of multiple readers, who do they interview? Mom? Dad? No. The kid.

Given the known biases by age, focusing on the youngest adult in the family will unavoidably skew the results towards print. (Textbooks!)

Similarly, the focus on single-book readers without context (was that one book read a regular ocurrence or an accident, was it choice or homework?) biases the results towards the practices of students and casual readers rather than regular book buyers.

It's a meaningless report.

The 18-29 year old group was the smallest they polled. They also read the fewest books but 35% said they read an ebook, highest % of any group.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

1,520 live calls is more than most polls.


In the 25 percent that was land-line calls, yes.


What about non-casual readers who use libraries almost exclusively?

This wasn't a study geared towards people who market novels. If someone starts a trade organization and funds a study that focuses on the kind of readers you think can be your direct or indirect customers, we can have a thread on that. Maybe we already have!


And any umpire can be played.

Hum, it took me a minute to figure out what ox was getting gored to get that kind of rapid dismissal on this thread. It does seem to contradict a couple of narratives that are quite popular with some on this board.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Respected in what way?
The fact is the people in the Gallup polls all signed up for it.
Pew apparently just cold calls. How is that better?

By the way: the questions are loaded on most of their polls. They have caught me a time or two.

Cold call Polls are a a more random sample (if the numbers called are reasonably random . Reasonable, because they do need to respect the National Do Not Call list)

I have never been polled where there was not a detectable slant. I usually can figure it from the answer choices within 4 or 5 questions

When you have a pool of prequalified (those who signed up), the sample is already at least 1 layer filtered: 'People who sign up for things'

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Fbone

The 18-29 year old group was the smallest they polled. They also read the fewest books but 35% said they read an ebook, highest % of any group.

And how would the numbers look if you excluded textbook-only and homework-only readers?

That lack of nuance is what makes the poll meaningless.

The textbook market is entirely different from the commercial book markets because those "readers" don't have a choice.

[barryem]

I just did a bit of googling on polls in the USA and then again on US Presidential polls. As Steve Eisenberg says, this poll used a fairly large sample compared to most.

All in all, based on what I read here, this seems to be as fair a poll as most. I don't particularly like the results but I see no particular reason to dismiss them. I prefer ebooks and I'd be a bit happier if everybody else did too. This doesn't really surprise me though.

I always am a bit skeptical of polls. There are so many variables and even if we asume the pollers re experts who don't want to slant things, they can't get it right all the time. It's just too complex. I am impressed with how often they seem to get things right.

I think polls are useful for getting an idea of what the truth might look like. It's a bit silly to think of them as Truth.

Barry

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

And how would the numbers look if you excluded textbook-only and homework-only readers?

Nearly identical to what was reported because they read the fewest books and were the smallest group.

The 18-29 age group is the most important in trying to predict future trends. The habits they form now will hopefully continue for the next 50 years. One positive figure is that 83% of that age group read for pleasure (the highest) so while some of them may be expected to read textbooks they also seem to enjoy them and other material.