Canadians have been making much more use of the Internet as a means of communication, whether it is from a computer in the home, workplace, school or library.
In 1998, there were 4,272,000 households with at least one member using computer communications from one location or another in a typical month, up 25% from 1997. These households accounted for 36% of all households in 1998, compared with 29% the year before.
These data came from the Household Internet Use Survey, conducted in October 1998, which surveyed 38,030 households in all 10 provinces. It was a follow-up to the same survey conducted in October 1997, the first to collect detailed data on how Canadian households use computer communications.
The latest results show that communication by computer still occurs primarily from the workplace, followed by homes and schools. However, from 1997 to 1998, the increase in computer communication from homes was so large that the gap between home use and work use was virtually eliminated.
In 1998, there were 2,689,000 households with at least one person who used the Internet as a vehicle for communicating from homes, up 44% from 1997. They accounted for 23% of all households, virtually the same proportion as those in which at least one member used computer communications from the workplace. In contrast, a year earlier, about 16% of households communicated by computer from home, compared with about 20% from the workplace.
Communication from schools was a distant third. Of course, not all households have members in school. About 12% of all households had someone who used the Internet from school in 1998, up from 9% in 1997.
The proportion of households regularly using computer communications, from any location, increased in every province between 1997 and 1998. The increases were strongest in Alberta, where 45% of all households used computers for communication in 1998, followed by British Columbia, where the proportion was 42%. Quebec had the lowest proportion (26%) of any province. However, this represented a significant increase from only 20% a year earlier.
Overall, among regular home-user households, there were no significant changes in the proportion where someone used the Internet from home for a work-related task. In 1998, about 32% of regular home users communicated by computer from home for an employer-related purpose; 23% did so for self-employment. Of course, the vast majority of these households do not use the Internet solely for business purposes - 95% of regular home-use households reported using the Internet for personal non-business reasons. These were almost the same proportions as in 1997.
With respect to type of services, e-mail was used by 86% of home-user households and general browsing was done by 78% of regular home-user households.
For duration of use, there was no single computer communication service, including e-mail or surfing the web, where more than 80% of regular home-user households spent even half their total home-use time.
Proportions of households from all points of use continued to show differences with respect to income group, family type, and the age and education level of the household head. However, the various interrelationships among these factors require more analysis. A more detailed breakdown of these and other data will be available in an analytical article in the next issue of Services indicators (63-016-XPB, $35/$116; 63-016-XIB, $26/$87), scheduled for mid-July. See How to order publications.
For more information, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact Jonathan Ellison (613-951-5882; ellijon@statcan.gc.ca), Science, Innovation and Electronic Information Division.
To purchase custom tabulations or the public-use microdata for the 1998 Household Internet Use Survey (56M0002GPE), or the companion 1997 Household Internet Use Survey (56M0002GPE), contact Client Services (613-951-7355 or 1-888-297-7355; fax 613-951-3012; income@statcan.gc.ca), Special Surveys Division.