This post is part of the AO3 census data analysis.
N.B. The above percentages refer to % of total responses to this question, and sum to 100%. Percentages shown below refer to the % of total survey participants unless otherwise specified.
This question was phrased as "How long do you spend on AO3 in a typical session?" Only one response could be selected.
Responses
The responses were selected with the following frequencies:
Less than 15 minutes - 247 respondents. 2.5%
15 - 30 minutes - 1270 respondents. 12.7%
30 minutes - 1 hour - 2808 respondents. 28.1%
1 - 2 hours - 2666 respondents. 26.6%
2 - 3 hours - 1643 respondents. 16.4%
More than 3 hours - 1309 respondents. 13.1%
62 respondents (0.6%) did not respond to this question.
Taking the values for each range to be at the midpoint of the possible values, with the "More than 3 hours" value being 4 hours, the mean session length was found to be 1.60 hours (96 minutes) with a standard deviation of 1.16 hours (70 minutes). The median value is within the range 1 - 2 hours.
By combining this with the frequency of use values from the previous question, I approximated the number of hours per week each respondent spent on the site. These ranged from 0 hours/week (one or both questions not answered), which was found for 74 respondents (0.7%), to 60 hours/week, which was answered by 603 respondents (6.0%).
The mean value found for all 10,005 respondents was 11.7 hours/week with a standard deviation of 15.3 hours/week and a median of 5.6 hours/week. The mode value was 6 hours/week, which was found for 819 respondents (8.2%).
Limitations
As with all behavioural questions, this relies upon the respondents answering accurately, which may not be the case.
