The Internet Access Quarterly Update was released earlier this week.
It’s compiled by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) and, through surveys around the country, tries to get an understanding of what sort of percentages of different groups around the county are and aren’t using the Internet.
Isle of Wight data
The data was originally done on a regional basis, eg South East, but each of the areas within those regions asked for more specific info. The ONS agreed and so the Isle of Wight now has its own measurements taken.
As their survey of each individual area is relatively small, the data can fluctuate (it’s called percentage of ‘confidence’ in the stats game).
Getting to the number
This leads to the percentage of people who have never used the Internet to change over the last five quarters (starting 2012 Q4) – 15.4; 11.2; 12.3; 17.0; 20.7 – (Ending 2013 Q4). You would expect the percentage to consistently reduce over time.
OnTheWight spoke to ONS about this and suggested that taking an average of the last five quarters, bring us to 15.3%. The ONS agreed that would work, if we explained the number and the method behind that – so here we are!
Using the same method, that equates to about 17,000 people aged 16 and over.
85% have
Of course the other side of that is that 84.7% of the Island’s 16+ population have used the Internet and by the ONS calculations, that equals about 94,000 people.
