世論 What Japan Thinks

goo Research recently took a look at keeping in touch with close friends, with the surprising result in the headline reported in japan.internet.com.

Demographics

Between the 21st and 24th of March 2012 1,082 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.8% of the sample were male, 16.5% in their teens, 17.8% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 12.3% aged sixty or older.

Knowing what I know about Japan, email and telephone being top are not surprising to me, but I was most taken aback by ordinary post coming in third! Thinking more closely, the mixi, Twitter and Facebook figures correlate to the penetration of these SNS within Japan, but I suspect that the old-fashioned post includes New Year postcards, where even I often exchange annual greetings with ex-colleagues who have moved to other divisions within my employer.

Research results

Q1: How do you usually keep in touch with close friends? (Sample size=1,082, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Email	927	85.7%
Telephone	823	76.1%
Postal letter	163	15.1%
mixi	150	13.9%
Twitter	121	11.2%
Facebook	121	11.2%
Skype	110	10.2%
Line	61	5.6%
Ameba pigg	20	1.8%
Google Plus	13	1.2%
Other	6	0.6%
Don’t have any close friends	79	7.3%

Dropping the 79 friendless respondents, the remaining 1,003 were asked about how often they touched base with their friends, although that isn’t clear if it’s how often any friend is communicated with or on average, how often they keep in touch with the average friend. 25.7% said less than once a month, 19.8% once a week, 17.8% once a month, and 7.0% every day. How the remaining 29.7% are distributed was not reported. These 1,003 were then asked this question.

Q1SQ: Do you use different methods for keeping in touch regarding separate matters or topics? (Sample size=1,082)

Yes	54.1%
No	38.2%
Don’t know	7.7%

Those 543 who used different methods for different matters were asked how they would get in touch regarding positive matters such as inviting people out. 463 people would choose email and 138 telephone. Less than thirty people in total would choose an SNS or free messaging service.