Panel Characteristics

Size

• The StudyResponse panel varies in size over time, depending upon Internet accessibility and international economic trends.
  
• During 2006 and 2007 the panel has cycled between 50,000 and 60,000 participants.
• New participants join every day, but our efforts to maintain the panel also show that approximately 10% of email addresses become non-responsive every month.
• Thus, one of our major, daily tasks is to check the validity of panelists' email addresses and extract those that are no longer reachable from the active panel.

Gender

• Within this framework, the panel is consistently 66% female.

Education

• The average level of educational attainment is two years of college, but this reflects a highly bimodal distribution with a peak at four years of high school and another, smaller peak at four years of college.

Age

• The average age of a panelist is 34 years old

Work Experience

• The average number of years of work experience is 15.

Employment

• Approximately 30% of the panel is employed full time
• 14% are employed part time.
• The top five occupational areas represented are:
  • Administrative/support
  • Education/training
  • Health/safety
  • Retail/wholesale
  • Accounting or financial.
• Among individuals not in traditional full or part time employment situations, the most common occupational areas are homemaker (19% of the panel) and student (11% of the panel).

Ethnicity

• About three quarters of the panelists report their ethnic background as Caucasian.
• Roughly 10% report themselves as Asian/Pacific Islander.
• Slightly under 3% report themselves as Hispanic with roughly the same proportion reporting African-American.
• Ethnicity designations reflect the common designations used in the United States and they may not apply to individuals from other nations: Slightly under 10% of the panel did not select an ethnicity or selected "Other."