The data, provided to Digital Vision by Scarborough Research, is from interviews with more than 300 Cleveland residents, 18 and older, conducted in 2004-2005. While it's not a perfect random sample of the city's adult population, Scarborough says the sample is "stable", i.e. the margin of error is reasonable. Here are some of the highlights:
Barely half of the city residents interviewed use the Internet at all, from anywhere -- home, work, library, etc. Only 41% say they've gone on line from home in the previous month. (55% live in households that have computers.) The percentage of Internet users is slightly lower for African-American respondents than for whites, and significantly lower for respondents "of Hispanic origin".All in all, Scarborough's data reveals a Cleveland that's still, mostly, not on the Net.
Of respondents who haven't gone to college, only 34% are Internet users. (Three out of five Cleveland adults fit this description.)
Among respondents with household incomes below $25,000 (that's half of all Cleveland households) only 30% are Internet users.
While the data doesn't say it directly, I infer that the percentage of Cleveland households in the sample with active Internet connections may be as low as 40%. One out of five respondents say they have DSL or cable modems at home.
The Scarborough sample is somewhat short on people from the lowest education and income cohorts, compared to their presence in Cleveland's census numbers. So, if anything, the real picture is probably a little bleaker than the numbers above suggest.
Something for us all to think about while sitting in the coffeehouse with our laptops, following George's Wi-Fi tour.