I blogged earlier about the Pew Internet research on the state of blogging. Since then I have spent some more time looking at it and at statistics from two other sources. One source is the Perseus blog survey which is a year or so old but which looked at a lot of data. The other source is Live Journals own statistical report.

There is some similarity in what is being reported in all three sources but there are some differences. The differences concern me a bit as they suggest that the research method, telephone survey, may not have been the ideal way to gather information about internet usage.

For example, the Pew report says that bloggers are more likely to be male (57%) and young. Their idea of young is that 48% are under age 30. At the same time Live Journal reports that 48% of their members are under 18 and that 73% are under age 21. Also Live Journal reports that over 67% of their members are female. The Perseus blog survey reported that 92% of blogs were created by people under aged 30 and almost 53% by people 19 and younger. Perseus also reported that 56% of bloggers were female.. Something is not quite right here.

There are a couple of possibilities to explain these differences. One is that Live Journal and the Perseus study looked at blogs at particular hosted sites. These sites may attract a disproportionate number of females and young people. But I don’t think that explains it all. I think the problem is that people under 21 tend to be underrepresented in telephone surveys. I suspect, but do not know, that men were also over represented in the Pew survey. The data is suspect in my opinion.