AATP Interactive

Pew Report - Search Engines

According to the new survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, search engine users are confident, satisfied and trusting – but they are also unaware and naïve.

Internet users are confident about the search engines that they use and the experiences they have when searching the internet. But these same satisfied internet users are generally unsophisticated about why and how they use search engines. They are also strikingly unaware of how search engines operate and how they present their results.

They tend to settle quickly on a single search engine and then stick with it, rather than switching as search technology evolves or comparing results from different search systems. Some 44% of searchers regularly use just one engine, and another 48% use just two or three. Nearly half of searchers use a search engines no more than a few times a week.

Few say they are aware of the financial incentives that affect how search engines perform and how they present their search results. Only 38% of users are aware of the distinction between paid or “sponsored” results and unpaid results.

Pew Internet & American Life Project Search Engine Report (pdf)

Treatment of Anxiety & Depression on the Internet

PsychNotes reviews a recent article from Current Opinion in Psychiatry that evaluates CBT treatment of anxiety disorders via the Internet. Results suggest that "while there are only a few promising published studies on the use of the Internet in the treatment of anxiety disorders, there is additional research in progress that gives preliminary support for the use of the Internet in managing anxiety, and in particular panic disorder.

In a related study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, researchers from the Centre for Mental Health Research, The Australian National University, compared anxiety and depression outcomes for spontaneous visitors to a publicly accessible cognitive behavior therapy website (MoodGYM) with outcomes achieved through a randomized controlled efficacy trial of the same site.

Interestingly enough, this study found that public registrants did not differ from trial participants in gender, age, or initial level of depression and there were no significant differences in anxiety or depression change scores observed, with both public registrants and trial participants improving through the training program. The authors concluded that public registrants to a cognitive behavior therapy website show significant change in anxiety and depression symptoms. The extent of change does not differ from that exhibited by participants enrolled on the website for a randomized controlled trial.

Weblogs - Pew Report Jan 2005

The latest Pew Internet & American Life Project Report on Weblogs (PDF)

By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a key part of online culture. Two surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in November established new contours for the blogosphere: 8 million American adults say they have created blogs; blog readership jumped 58% in 2004 and now stands at 27% of internet users; 5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online; and 12% of internet users have posted comments or other material on blogs. Still, 62% of internet users do not know what a blog is.

Report (PDF)