世論 What Japan Thinks

At the start of this month japan.internet.com in conjunction with goo Research got 1,089 replies to an internet-based questionnaire about the use of Question and Answer sites in particular, and looking up things in general. The user demographics were 23.0% in their twenties, 41.0% in their thirties, 25.9% in their forties, 7.2% in their fifties, and 2.8% in their sixties. 53.3% of the sample were female.

From the English language point of view, I’ve only ever questioned and answered on Experts Exchange in the dim and distant past, and glanced at Google Answers once or twice recently. I’m much more of a BBS and Usenet person myself.

One question not addressed by this survey (or perhaps only addressed if you pay money to get the full survey results) is how much people trust the answers they get. However, even a seemingly simple question like that may not have a simple answer. Thinking of Wikipedia, for instance (which isn’t a Q&A site, admittedly), depending on the information I am searching, my trust level varies. In fact, I have recently stopped linking to it as I feel that because the pointed-to page can change, I may no longer be referring to the same information that I was pointing to in the past; in addition for controversial subjects the page can get frozen, or at least adopted as a base line, at a non-neutral point of view, despite the protestations of neutrality from the ‘pedia-philes.

Q1:When you have something to look up, what do you do? (Sample size=1,089, multiple answer)

Use search engine to find related site and look it up myself	99.4%
Look up or ask on a bulletin board	41.5%
Go to a library or bookstore and look up reference material	41.0%
Ask a friend with detailed knowledge	38.4%
Look up or ask at an internet Q&A site (to SQ1)	29.1%
Other	0.7%

This is a survey for internet users only, therefore almost everyone uses the internet; it does not imply that just about all the population of Japan googles for stuff (or should that be “yahoos for stuff”, as it seems more popular over here (note to self – find search engine usage stats for Japan)).

Q1SQ1: What Q&A sites do you use? (Sample size=317, multiple answer)

Site	Users	Percentage
“教えて！goo”, “Tell me, goo!”	215	67.8%
“Yahoo！知恵袋”, “Yahoo! Brains”	152	47.9%
“はてな”, “Hatena”	71	22.4%
“答えてねっと”, “Answer net”	54	17.0%
“OK Wave”	50	15.8%
“知識 plus”, “Knowledge plus”	10	3.2%

Note that since the survey was conducted by goo Research, there is probably some considerable sample bias here.

Q1SQ2: How do you mainly use Q&A sites? (Sample size=317)

Ask questions	11.4%
Look at past questions	86.1%
Provide answers	1.9%
Other	0.6%

Q2: If there was a question you could answer on a Q&A site, would you want to answer even if there was no reward? (Sample size=1,089)

Want to answer questions even though no reward	73.6%
Don’t want to answer questions if no reward	26.4%