世論 What Japan Thinks

Recently japan.internet.com published the results of a survey conducted by RealWorld RealResearch into Q&A site usage, a field which has seen two moderate-sized players, one of them being Microsoft, shut down their services this year.

Demographics

Over the 1st and 2nd of September 2009 1,013 members of the RealWorld RealResearch monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 61.2% of the sample were male, 8.1% in their teens, 8.6% in their twenties, 11.1% in their thirties, 41.1% in their forties, 19.1% in their fifties, and 12.1% aged sixty or older.

I’ve used an English-language Q&A site, and although I did find that the majority of answers were reasonably correct, with the public voting it was a bit too easy for wrong but playing to the crowd answers to do better than an unpopular but more correct opinion. I’ve since stopped visiting after realising how much time I was wasting, as they are quite addictive places!

The article also mentions that on the 9th of September 2009 Yahoo! Chiebukuro had surpassed 30 million questions and 80 million answers!

Research results

First, from the sample 234 people, or 23.1%, had used Q&A sites. They were asked the following.

Q1: Which Q&A sites have you used? (Sample size=234, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Yahoo! Chiebukuro (Yahoo! Bag of knowledge)	188	80.3%
Oshiete! goo (Tell me! goo)	155	66.2%
OKWave	62	26.5%
Hatena	38	16.2%
Kotaete Netto (Answer Net) (Now closed)	30	12.8%
Chisiki plus (Knowledge plus) (Now closed)	3	1.3%
Other	19	8.1%

Q2: How have you used Q&A sites? (Sample size=234)

Have viewed entries	79.7%
Have asked questions	14.4%
Have answered questions	5.9%
Other	0.0%

Q3: Do you think Q&A sites are reliable? (Sample size=234)

Sufficiently reliable	8.6%
Somewhat reliable	83.3%
Not really reliable	8.1%
Not at all reliable	0.0%