Women Over 40 Biggest Online Gamers

Ooby writes "MSNBC and Reuters are reporting that women over 40 are the biggest online gamers, according to a study conducted by AOL. What's even more interesting than being outnumbered by middle aged and older women is this: 'More than a quarter of those women, the survey found, play their favorite games between midnight and 5 a.m. Women in the poll tended to favor word and puzzle games.' I thought that was prime time for FPS kids."

better link for survey results

[fireduck]

here [aoltimewarner.com]

so it wasn't run through AOL, but an outside firm, which probably got a more representative sample.

But, there's lots of interesting statistics to go through. such as "Nearly Twice as Many Adults Have Played Internet Games for More than Eight Consecutive Hours than Teenagers"

Survey link, facts, info

[Anonymous Coward]

The AOL press release is here [aoltimewarner.com]. The precis: women over 40 who play games are more likely to play for extended time periods than gamers from other demographics. This does not mean that 15-year-old CounterStrike players are "outnumbered by middle aged and older women" playing PopCap.

The survey itself was conducted by Digital Marketing Services, a joint AOL/MARC Research company that does online opinion survey research. Although online polls suffer from various biases, the OpinionPlace.com [opinionplace.com] polls use pre-interview demo weights to help reduce some of those skews. (Though my doubts are not, of course, dissipated by their reassurances.)

Finally, candidate for "most disturbing graf" must be this:

Despite busy schedules, female gamers over 40 make time for their preferred hobby. Twenty-eight percent of them play games between midnight and 5:00 a.m., considerably more than men or teenage game-players. In fact, nearly half of these women (44 percent) said that they spend less time watching TV or movies, reading, exercising or spending time outside as a result of their online gaming habits.

-Watchful Babbler (where's that damned account password?)

Yep, Survey is BS.

[JavaLord]

AOL got opinionplace.com [opinionplace.com] to do the survey for them. Now if you look behind the BS that opinionplace and AOL throw at you about how "scientific" their data is, go to the opinion palace webpage and check out their FAQ. They give people AADVANTAGE miles for every survey they fill out. What are AAdvantage miles? They are American Airlines miles used twards getting a discount on flights.

This skews the data in all sorts of wierd ways, starting with the people taking it are the types who would sign up for such programs on the internet. Not to mention, how many 15 year old males care about Frequent flyer miles? Hell, how many savvy internet users would give their personal information up for some survey scam?

The conclusion drawn from this survey should be "Women over 40 are more likely to have gator installed on their machine and participate in stupid online surveys for some minimal payoff".....ok maybe that was a bit harsh....

If there is one truth about statistics in general, it's that if you play around with the numbers enough you can make surveys say whatever you want.