Community Participation by U.S. Adults
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Fri, Nov 07, 2008
The Pew Internet & American Life Project has conducted regular, extensive surveys on a wide variety of online behaviors of U.S. adults, including participation in online communities. I did a statistical "mashup" of Pew/Internet data with U.S. census data to come up with the following table, illustrating growth in community participation. In the first quarter of 2000, 80.1 million U.S. adults participated in online communities; by the end of 2007, this had increased to 146.6 million adults.
| Quarter |
Community Participants |
| 2000 Q1 |
80.1 million |
| 2000 Q2 |
82.1 million |
| 2000 Q3 |
84.3 million |
| 2000 Q4 |
90.0 million |
| 2001 Q1 |
92.1 million |
| 2001 Q2 |
94.3 million |
| 2001 Q3 |
96.6 million |
| 2001 Q4 |
102.4 million |
| 2002 Q1 |
108.2 million |
| 2002 Q2 |
103.3 million |
| 2002 Q3 |
109.3 million |
| 2002 Q4 |
102.6 million |
| 2003 Q1 |
112.0 million |
| 2003 Q2 |
112.5 million |
| 2003 Q3 |
115.0 million |
| 2003 Q4 |
117.4 million |
| 2004 Q1 |
116.1 million |
| 2004 Q2 |
116.6 million |
| 2004 Q3 |
115.4 million |
| 2004 Q4 |
114.1 million |
| 2005 Q1 |
125.8 million |
| 2005 Q2 |
128.3 million |
| 2005 Q3 |
136.5 million |
| 2005 Q4 |
125.8 million |
| 2006 Q1 |
139.7 million |
| 2006 Q2 |
137.5 million |
| 2006 Q3 |
135.3 million |
| 2006 Q4 |
136.0 million |
| 2007 Q1 |
138.6 million |
| 2007 Q2 |
141.2 million |
| 2007 Q3 |
143.9 million |
| 2007 Q4 |
146.6 million |
This a mashup, in the sense that neither the U.S. Census nor Pew would recognize the final output. I took the U.S. adult population (according to the Census), multiplied it by the percent of adults who use the Internet (according to Pew), then multiplied it by the percent who participate in online communities (again, according to Pew). For some quarters, where Pew did not field surveys with those particular questions, I interpolated estimates.