 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
 |
most thorough list possible, four questions were asked to capture all potential uses
and gratifications of respondents. These four questions were: 1) What is the first
thing that comes to mind when you think about what you enjoy most when accessing
the Web? 2) What other words describe what you enjoy about interacting with the
Web? 3) Using single, easy-to-understand terms, what do
you use the Web for?
and 4) What on-line activities are most important to you?
Results
A total of 98 individuals completed the questionnaire during the week. To
encourage ready participation, personal information was not solicited, so demo-
graphic
characteristics cannot be reported; however, relatively recent information
on Web users suggests that the average Web site visitor has a college degree (67%),
is reasonably affluent ($69,000 average income), and is married with children
(Gupta, 1997).
The respondents provided a total of 179 individual descriptive terms. Of these 179
items, 45 were mentioned a total of four times or more. These items and their total
number of mentions are shown in Table 1. The other 134 items were mentioned
three times or less. To maintain a manageable number of items in the subsequent
analysis, the 45 items mentioned four times or more were used in the questionnaire for
the second part of the research.
PART 2
The Questionnaire
A questionnaire was developed that included the 45 items identified in the first
stage of the research. For each of the 45 items, respondents were instructed to
indicate their perceived level of importance for each item with regard to their
motivations in accessing the Web. A scale of
one to seven, with seven being the most
important, was used.
To better understand the different motivations related to use of the technologi-
cal interface with the Internet (i.e., personal computers), three additional measures
were included in the questionnaire. The first was a five-item "affinity for the