1 Outline of the Survey

1999-01-25

Purpose of the Survey

The purpose of this survey is to obtain basic data for further increasing the usefulness and for promoting the availability of the Internet in the fields of scientific research and scientific technologies. This questionnaire relates to the environment, usage and problems of computer networks among academic societies (which play a major role in distributing information on scientific research and scientific technologies) and laboratories (which serve as the sites for research and are sources of information).

Targets of the Survey

Table 1-1:Number of Targets and Sampling Method
Target	Number of Targets	Sampling Method
Academic Societies	1,364	All academic societies registered at the Science Council of Japan in 1988
Research Institutes	1,011	Stratification random sampling from project leaders on the subject of adopting Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture in 1997

Method for Questions and Answers

Questions: Mailed questionnaire sheets to targets and simultaneously posted the questions on JPNIC's Web page.
Answers: Respondents either filled out the questionnaire sheets and mailed them back, or submitted their answers on the Internet home page.

Survey Period

Between August 3, 1998 and August 17, 1998

Number of Questionnaire Sheets Mailed and Number of Sheets Collected

In the survey of academic societies, the questionnaire sheet was mailed to a total of 1,360 academic societies and 470 (34.5% collection ratio) effective responses were returned. As for the survey among research institutes, the questionnaire sheet was mailed to 998 representatives of the research subsidy project while 295 (29.6% collection ratio) effective responses were returned. The overall collection ratio was 32.4%.

Table 1-2: Number of Questionnaire Sheets Mailed and Number of Sheets Collected
	Academic societies	Laboratories	Total	Remarks
Number of sheets mailed	1,364	1,011	2,375
Number of undelivered sheets	4	13	17	New address unknown, recipient unknown, addressee absent, addressee retired, etc.
Number of surveyed targets	1,360	998	2,358	(number of sheets mailed) - (number of sheets undelivered)
Mailed responses	408	231	639
WWW responses	62	64	127
Total number of responses collected	470	295	765	(mailed responses) + (WWW responses)
Collection ratio	34.5%	29.6%	32.4%	(total number of collected responses)/(Number of surveyed targets)

Fields of Study of Respondents

Figure 1-1indicates the ratio of respondents by major fields of study for academic society secretariats and research institutes (involved in the scientific research subsidy project) from which responses were collected. For both academic societies and research institutes, most responses came from the field of medicine; this represents more than one-third of all responses.