Gauging Household Digital Readiness

While research on the impact of broadband continues to increase, a broad understanding of what being digital ready entails is missing. This study—based on a 1,214 nonrepresentative household survey weighted by income, age, and educational attainment—developed a digital readiness index (DRI) score based on three related but distinct dimensions: device & internet access (DIA), digital resourcefulness and utilization (DRU), and internet benefits and impact (IBI). All scores calculated were normalized to a range from 0 to 10 for easier comprehension and comparison, where a higher score indicates a higher level for that particular digital readiness dimension. Some key findings:

• Regarding device & internet access, nonmetro respondents relied more on their smartphones and mobile data to connect to the internet compared to their metro counterparts. In the end, nonmetro did have a lower DIA score compared to metropolitan respondents.
• Regarding the digital readiness index score, metro households had a higher score (5.2) compared to nonmetro (4.5), leaving ample room for improvement given 10 is the highest score. More interestingly, when it comes to digital readiness a metro-nonmetro divide was not as large and surpassed by income and occupation differences.
• Of the three dimensions analyzed, internet benefits and impact had the lowest score. In other words, the impact of the internet on households—as measured by this study—is lagging. This implies that focusing on improving digital literacy and skills is critical to ensure the benefits of internet continue to accrue to households.