CU-Boulder Students' Use of E-mail

Planning, Budget, and Analysis estimates from a March 1997 survey that at least 85% of CU-Boulder undergraduates and 80% of graduate students are currently e-mail users. This survey replicated one done in March of 1995. While e-mail use still falls far short of universal, the proportion of students using e-mail has increased markedly since 1995. Documented use for undergraduates increased from 50% to 85%, and for graduate students, from about 65% to 80%.

In addition, the percentage of students who have University e-mail accounts has increased to 92% for both undergraduates and graduate students, up from 1995 when only 77% of undergraduates and 79% of graduate students had accounts. This increase is partly due to the University's practice of assigning e-mail accounts to all new undergraduates, which began fall of 1994.

We started with a representative sample of 745 graduate students and 783 undergraduates. Those with University accounts were sent one e-mail message, asking them to reply to the message and to say how many days per week they check e-mail. Throughout this report "documented users" refers to students we knew had logged in since January, 1997 (log-in information is available for accounts maintained by CU-Boulder's Information Technology Services (ITS)), or who responded to the e-mail survey even though we had no ITS log-in information for them. Non-users include:

• those without ITS-maintained accounts who did not respond to the survey
• those with ITS-maintained accounts who did not respond to the survey and who last logged in sometime before January, 1997

                                Responded to
                                 survey (of     Responded to   Documented user
               Has a University    account       survey (of    (responded or    
                e-mail account    holders)     entire sample)    logged in)      N in sample
                     Year            Year            Year            Year            Year
                  97      95      97      95      97      95      97      95      97     95

 All Undergrads   92%     77%     53%     39%     49%     30%     85%     48%     783    774
 --GENDER--
 Females          92%     78%     57%     38%     52%     29%     85%     46%     372    364
 Males            92%     76%     49%     41%     45%     31%     85%     50%     411    410
 --RESIDENCY--
 Non-resident     94%     76%     50%     34%     47%     26%     85%     47%     264    232
 Resident         91%     77%     54%     41%     50%     32%     85%     49%     519    542

• The proportion of users is slightly higher for freshmen and seniors (89%) than for the other two class levels (80-83%).

                                 Responded to
                                 survey (of     Responded to   Documented user
               Has a University    account       survey (of     (responded or
                e-mail account    holders)     entire sample)    logged in)      N in sample
                     Year            Year            Year            Year            Year
                  97      95      97      95      97      95      97      95      97     95
 --CLASS LEVEL
 1-Freshman       93%     94%     53%     31%     50%     30%     89%     51%     169    162
 2-Sophomore      92%     74%     51%     39%     47%     28%     83%     43%     196    172
 3-Junior         89%     77%     49%     45%     45%     35%     80%     54%     173    175
 4-Senior         93%     68%     56%     42%     53%     29%     89%     47%     245    265

Because accounts were first issued to all incoming freshmen in fall 1994, the 1995 survey showed that freshmen were more likely to have University computer accounts than sophomores, juniors, and seniors (94% vs. 68-77%). And since this practice has continued, with students keeping their accounts throughout their college career, 1997 freshmen are now no more likely than the other class levels to have accounts.

• In 1995, all Engineering students had University e-mail accounts and only 72-83% of students in the other colleges did. Not surprisingly, Engineering students were much more likely to use e-mail than students in the other colleges (80% vs. 42-55%).
• In 1997, Engineering (98%) and Business students (96%) were more likely than those in the other colleges (81-83%) to use e-mail, largely because all students in Engineering and Business have University e-mail accounts, but this is not yet the case for the other colleges.

                                Responded to
                                 survey (of     Responded to   Documented user
               Has a University    account       survey (of     (responded or
                e-mail account    holders)     entire sample)    logged in)      N in sample
                     Year            Year            Year            Year            Year
                  97      95      97      95      97      95      97      95      97     95
 --COLLEGE--
 Arts+Sciences    90%     72%     52%     37%     47%     27%     81%     42%     537    546
 Business        100%     83%     53%     44%     53%     36%     96%     54%      99     94
 Engineering     100%    100%     60%     49%     60%     49%     98%     80%      94     81
 Other            89%     75%     47%     33%     42%     25%     83%     55%      53     53

• The higher the student's cumulative GPA, the better the chances of e-mail use. This was true in both 1995 and 1997.

                                Responded to
                                 survey (of     Responded to   Documented user
               Has a University    account       survey (of     (responded or
                e-mail account    holders)     entire sample)    logged in)      N in sample
                     Year            Year            Year            Year            Year
                  97      95      97      95      97      95      97      95      97     95
 --CUM GPA--
 3.5-4.0          96%     81%     67%     58%     64%     47%     93%     59%     135    113
 3.0-3.5          91%     76%     55%     44%     50%     33%     85%     53%     211    204
 2.5-3.0          93%     77%     51%     36%     47%     28%     88%     48%     215    224
 0.0-2.5          90%     75%     44%     29%     40%     22%     78%     39%     222    233
 

81% of all graduate students, including those with and without ITS-maintained accounts, are documented users.

• The current proportions of men and women users are about equal (82% and 80%, respectively), whereas in 1995 use was notably higher for men than for women (71% vs. 53%).
• Use is higher for Business School students (95%) and lower for Graduate School (81%) and law students (78%).
• Use among law students more than doubled between 1995 and 1997.

Graduate Students:             Responded to
                                 survey (of     Responded to   Documented user
              Has a University    account       survey (of      (responded or
               e-mail account    holders)      entire sample)     logged in)     N in sample

                     Year            Year            Year            Year            Year
                  97      95      97      95      97      95      97      95      97     95
 All Grads        92%     79%     64%     60%     58%     48%     81%     64%     745    747
 --GENDER--
 Females          89%     72%     66%     52%     58%     38%     80%     53%     315    306
 Males            94%     84%     62%     65%     58%     55%     82%     71%     430    441
 --RESIDENCY--
 Non-resident     95%     84%     66%     61%     63%     51%     84%     71%     207    191
 Resident         91%     78%     62%     60%     57%     47%     80%     61%     538    556
 --COLLEGE--
 Business        100%    100%     46%     64%     46%     64%     95%    100%      41     22
 Grad             91%     82%     66%     61%     61%     50%     81%     66%     623    647
 Law              91%     49%     53%     47%     48%     23%     78%     31%      81     78
 --CUM GPA--
 3.5-4.0          91%     82%     65%     63%     60%     52%     80%     67%     519    509
 3.0-3.5          95%     84%     60%     56%     57%     47%     86%     64%     150    159
 2.5-3.0          95%     49%     56%     33%     53%     16%     84%     30%      38     37
 0.0-2.5          82%     60%     68%     48%     55%     29%     74%     50%      38     42

• 72% of all graduate student documented users responded to the 1997 e-mail survey compared to 75% in 1995. However, 58% of the entire sample responded in 1997, compared to 48% in 1995.

                       % Responding of   % Responding  % Documented                          
                      Documented Users   of entire        Users
                                           sample
			Year   Year     Year   Year    Year   Year
                         97     95       97     95      97     95
                         
 All Undergrads          58%    63%      49%    30%     85%    48%
 --GENDER--
 Females                 61%    63%      52%    29%     85%    46%
 Males                   53%    62%      45%    31%     85%    50%
--CUM GPA-- 
 3.5-4.0                 68%    79%      64%    47%     93%    59%
 3.0-3.5                 59%    62%      50%    33%     85%    53%
 2.5-3.0                 53%    58%      47%    28%     88%    48%
 0.0-2.5                 51%    56%      40%    22%     78%    39%

 All Graduate Students   72%    75%      58%    48%     81%    64%

Self-reported e-mail use: About 65% of survey respondents (75% of graduate students and 60% of undergraduates) said they check e-mail five or more days per week. 99% of all respondents said they check e-mail at least once a week. The number of days students say they use e-mail is shown in the table below. Results for this question were not tallied for the 1995 survey.

                                             Percentage of:
            Days per week users say    	  Under-
            they check e-mail 		graduates    Graduates
            Less than 1 day per week         1%          1%
            1 to 2 days per week             11%         8%
            3 to 4 days per week             28%         15%
            5 or more days per week          60%         75%

Response time--by Date: A standard mail survey with one reminder postcard requires about six weeks for the majority of responses to be returned. The response time for the 1997 e-mail survey, however, was much quicker. 97% of all responses were in within just eight days and 86% of the responses were in by the third day. This quick response time was due to both the contact method and the brevity (only one question) of the survey.

Spring 97 E-mail Survey Responses by DATE

Response time--by Hour of Day: We also checked the distribution of the time of day students responded in a full 24-hour period, calculated across all the days on which they replied. Students most frequently replied between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. and between 9:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m.

Spring 97 E-mail Survey Responses by TIME