College Students Prefer PC over Mac

Primary Research Group has published The Survey of American College Students: Use of Academic Library Workstations. The data in the report is based on a representative sample of more than 400 full time college students in the United States. Data is broken out by 16 criteria including gender, grade point average, major field of study, income level of students and type, size of college, and mean SAT acceptance score of colleges, among other variables.

The study presents more than 170 tables of data describing how American college students use their library workstations, how long they wait for them, how they view their availability and whether they prefer Macs or PC’s. The report also covers use of laptops in the college library, both students own and those provided by the college library. Other issues covered include use of the library’s online catalog and out of library access to the library home page.

Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:

More than 21% of students sampled say that they almost always or often have to wait to get a workstation in the library. Only 35.2% say that they never have to wait and close to 44% say that they generally don’t have to often wait for a workstation at their library.

About a third of students sampled don’t care whether or not they use a MAC or a PC in their college library. 13.53% prefer to use MACS while 52.63% prefer PC’s.

A shade more than 71% of the students in the sample have ever used their library’s online catalog.

Students who grew up in major cities were much more likely than those who grew up in other locales to use their own laptops in the college library.

Close to 60% of community college students said that they would use laptops occasionally or often in the library if the library supplied them on loan.

The study is available from major book distributors or from Primary Research Group directly. The price is $75.00 for a PDF and $69.50 for a print version. To view a table of contents, or to order, call 212-736-2316 or view our website at www.PrimaryResearch.com.