Article 1273 of ncf.sub.system-design: Xref: freenet.carleton.ca ncf.sub.system-design:1147 Newsgroups: ncf.sub.system-design Path: freenet.carleton.ca!FreeNet.Carleton.CA!aa456 From: aa456@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Jim Elder) Subject: Ratio of males:females at NCF through time Message-ID: Sender: aa456@freenet3.carleton.ca (Jim Elder) Reply-To: aa456@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Jim Elder) Organization: The National Capital FreeNet Date: Sun, 18 Jun 1995 12:59:10 GMT Lines: 128 What is the split of male/females at NCF, and is it changing? "Diffusion theory" suggests that people have differing reactions to new things. For a particular new thing, people can be grouped as: Innovators Venturesome, eager to try new ideas, desires "the hazardous, the rash, the daring, and the risky". Cosmopolitan. Too scary and wild to be a respected person. Early Adopters Respectable, part of the local social system. Opinion leader. The person to check with before trying anything new. Early Majority Deliberate. "Be not the first by whom the new are tried, nor the last to lay the old aside". Late Majority Skeptical, less affluent and therefore unwilling to take risks, waits until peer pressure is high, risk is low. Laggards Traditional, isolated from social network, suspicious of change. As the labels imply, the bulk of the population is in the 'early/late majority' groups. A very small percentage is in the 'innovator' and 'laggard' groups. The first members of FreeNet were probably 'early adopters', and now, with the Internet and web getting saturation coverage in the media, new members are probably in the 'early majority' category. ('Innovators' were probably lost as users of NCF five minutes after they first tried it.) For whatever reasons, the first people to pick-up on an innovation are usually youngish males. The profile of a typical cybernaut a year or so ago supports the theory. As the innovation (online networking) diffuses, we can expect members of NCF to become more representative of the community at large. Accordingly, we can expect the male:female ratio to reach 50:50. Curiousity drove me to examine the NCF member list and attempt to classify members as male/female. I sorted all first names by frequency and then unscientifically classified (if possible) all names occurring more than 5 times. 'Names' had to be greater than 2 characters and start with an uppercase letter (eliminating people using initials and administrative accounts). Then I examined each lot of 1000 users, in the order of their enrolment sequence, to see how many were males, females, or unclassified. The results are displayed in the table below. There has been a steady trend toward 50:50. For names that could be classified, the ratio starts at 85:15 (m:f) and is now at 69:31 (m:f). The number of 'unclassified' names was steady at about 20%. (If people using initials are included as females, the trend is similar, ending at a m:f ratio of 67:33). Those of you with a personal computer and a spreadsheet program can easily see the trends by charting the data. Unclassified names are either ambiguous (e.g., 'jean') or, more likely, occur less than 5 times. Infrequent names may be associated with minority groups and, due to the predominance of males, are more likely to be females (so the numbers below are probably skewed slightly toward males). (Think of this as 'interesting' but don't put a lot of weight on it; I only spent an hour or two and of course there may be classification errors.) 43 lots, each with 1000 people, in order of joining NCF: Male Female Unclassified Male Female 719 130 151 85% 15% 742 102 156 88% 12% 696 118 186 86% 14% 668 127 205 84% 16% 674 160 166 81% 19% 656 143 201 82% 18% 625 160 215 80% 20% 642 143 215 82% 18% 671 137 192 83% 17% 644 164 192 80% 20% 652 154 194 81% 19% 636 163 201 80% 20% 641 176 183 78% 22% 661 153 186 81% 19% 608 194 198 76% 24% 625 181 194 78% 22% 581 213 206 73% 27% 603 195 202 76% 24% 602 227 171 73% 27% 603 194 203 76% 24% 618 192 190 76% 24% 594 193 213 75% 25% 625 185 190 77% 23% 599 199 202 75% 25% 603 208 189 74% 26% 610 200 190 75% 25% 609 188 203 76% 24% 615 195 190 76% 24% 592 206 202 74% 26% 587 214 199 73% 27% 621 193 186 76% 24% 597 207 196 74% 26% 601 209 190 74% 26% 611 172 217 78% 22% 630 192 178 77% 23% 594 220 186 73% 27% 608 198 194 75% 25% 549 248 203 69% 31% 581 210 209 73% 27% 591 227 182 72% 28% 565 213 222 73% 27% 576 231 193 71% 29% 531 234 235 69% 31% And, for those of you wanting to know the common names, here are the top ten for each gender: m 1055 John m 1026 David m 725 Michael m 704 Robert m 574 Peter m 563 Paul m 480 Richard m 446 Chris (this is ambiguous but I figured most likely male) m 403 James m 396 Mark f 167 Jennifer f 147 Susan f 133 Mary f 118 Karen f 115 Linda f 111 Heather f 108 Christine f 98 Julie f 91 Barbara f 90 Patricia [Some edited comments on this analysis follow.] From ad097 Fri Jun 23 00:28:33 1995 Received: from freenet2.carleton.ca (freenet2.carleton.ca [134.117.1.39]) by freenet.carleton.ca (8.6.12/8.6.4) with ESMTP id AAA27795; Fri, 23 Jun 1995 00:28:31 -0400 Received: by freenet2.carleton.ca (8.6.12/Sun-Client) id AAA27728; Fri, 23 Jun 1995 00:28:28 -0400 Date: Fri, 23 Jun 1995 00:28:28 -0400 Message-Id: <199506230428.AAA27728@freenet2.carleton.ca> From: ad097@freenet.carleton.ca (Alana Boltwood) To: aa456 Subject: Competing data on m/f ratio Reply-To: ad097 Status: RO Here are some methodological comments on the first-names analysis. For one thing, since women are less numerous, common female names are *less likely to occur more than 5 times*. This biases your count against women, in a recursive sort of way. We also don't know if women are more likely to have a diversity of names, without some general population name data. Also, instead of figuring Chris is male, you could split it 90/10 or something. It is a guess no matter what. We should keep in mind that the Industry Canada survey was voluntary. Some people were randomly sampled and asked to complete it, but it was voluntary. Your analysis was in no way voluntary. It may be that women are more or less likely to voluntarily fill out a survey. (they may be more willing to 'help out' but they may also be more wary of offering data about themselves.) -- Alana Boltwood, ad097@freenet.carleton.ca, Ottawa, Canada, (613) 726-9292 Survey Methodologist, education methods, Statistics Canada * * * * Disclaimer: The null hypothesis that * * "StatsCan and I agree" would be rejected 19 times in 20. * Forwarded message: > From andrew@calvin.dgbt.doc.ca Mon Jun 19 10:04:52 1995 > Date: Mon, 19 Jun 95 10:02:56 EDT > From: andrew@calvin.dgbt.doc.ca (Andrew Patrick) > Message-Id: <9506191402.AA05512@calvin.dgbt.doc.ca> > In-Reply-To: Jim Elder > "Ratio of males:females at NCF over time" (Jun 18, 9:16am) > Reply-To: andrew@calvin.dgbt.doc.ca > X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92) > To: Jim Elder , aa333@freenet.carleton.ca, > aa693@freenet.carleton.ca, ab161@freenet.carleton.ca, > af088@freenet.carleton.ca, ah654@freenet.carleton.ca, > am412@freenet.carleton.ca, ao594@freenet.carleton.ca, > be464@freenet.carleton.ca > Subject: Re: Ratio of males:females at NCF over time > Cc: aa610@freenet.carleton.ca (Ian Allen), > aa118@freenet.carleton.ca (Andrew Patrick) > > You may be intersted in the following description of the survey results > for the question of gender. This comes from an early draft report > of the first set of findings. > > 1052 users answered a question about their gender, and 81.8% of the > respondents were male (18.2% female). The census data for the local > region shows that only 49% of the population is male. This suggests > that females are under-represented on the NCF, and might indicate > that NCF users are a special subset of the community. > > It is important, however, to compare these results with those of > other systems. The study of Cleveland Free-Net users reported 83% > males, while the Digital City data showed 91% males. Thus, when > compared to other FreeNet systems the NCF is more gender balanced. > Further, the survey of WWW users showed 90% males. So there may be > gender inequality in the NCF, but it is not as extreme as other > FreeNet systems or the Internet WWW service. > > Quarterman & Carl-Mitchell (1995) recently reported some interesting > results on gender inequality on the Internet. For their study they > surveyed organizations connected to the Internet and asked: "For > network users who can send electronic mail from inside to outside > your domain, please give percentages for the following genders: > male, female." Their survey of 1,468 organizations indicated that > 64% of users with mail connections to the Internet were male. These > results suggest that when it comes to access to the Internet (at > least for electronic mail), there is more gender equality. It is > important to note the difference between ACCESS to a service and USE > of the service. These results from organizations connected to the > Internet suggest that more women have access to the Internet than > actually use it. > > > -- > Andrew Patrick (aa118@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) > Vice-President, National Capital FreeNet >