Scruitable Japanese

Looking for something else, I found an interesting website: What Japan Thinks.

The blog, written under the pseudonym “Seron,” is devoted to translating Japanese-language opinion survey results into English. For example, Friday’s post summarizes the effectiveness of contextual online ads in news sites and blogs, based on a survey of 1,085 Japanese respondents in March.

It is written by Ken Yasumoto-Nicolson, a mobile phone software engineer from Scotland who lives in Kansai (the region near Osaka). The author chose to write the blog after getting frustrated by how many people spouted off online based on stereotypes and assumptions, not facts.

The blog tags aren’t very useful, but there is a built-in (Google-based) search option. For example, on March 5 he summarized a panel survey of web surfers:

Q1: Is a computer or mobile phone the main way you view web sites? (Sample size=1,067)
Mobile phone 8.7%
Computer 84.0%
Both about the same 7.3%

An earlier 2005 survey produced very different results, but the sampling frame was people who already used their Internet-enabled mobile phones. As he notes, the March 2009 results may be skewed by the panel solicitation:

Note that one way that they recruit their mobile monitors is by getting them to enter their mobile phone email address when they apply to be a PC monitor, so bear that in mind while reading the results.

Other posts this year include on UMPC vs. Netbooks and portable music players/headphones.

As someone who likes free research data — for my research papers and for my blog — this is a great deal, even if the coverage (due to the availability of input product) is irregular.