The Pew Internet Post provides New Numbers for Blogging and Blog Readership. In their spring tracking survery they used two new questioning measurements of blog reading, each of which captures a slightly different set of behaviors.

Our first measure of blog readership uses the present-tense question, “Do you ever read someone else’s online journal or blog?”. In total, 33% of internet users (the equivalent of 24% of all adults) say they read blogs, with 11% of internet users doing so on a typical day.

Our second blog readership question is based on a slightly different question construction: the past-tense “Have you ever read someone else’s online journal or blog?” This figure is consistently higher than the one discussed above; this is because its wording captures people who once read blogs but now do not for whatever reason. 42% of internet users (representing 32% of all adults) answer this question affirmatively.

Apparently because of the power of questioning, we are seeing a difference between males and females.

male and female internet users are equally likely to say that they do read other people’s blogs (35% for men, 32% for women). However, among internet users men are more likely to say that they have read other people’s blogs (48% vs. 38%). We suspect that this is due to the male-heavy nature of the initial blog readership population–men are generally heavily represented among the early adopters for most.

Oh please! give me a break. Even if there is research that says males are more likely to be early adopters – you can’t just assume this is the cause of the difference in response.

Maybe guys felt easier about saying the they have read other peoples blogs than owning up to not reading blogs …. easy to stretch the truth and make it look as if they’re cool.  Maybe its something else entirely.

Either way – ‘Apparently!‘ wouldn’t be quite legitimate social research analysis would it!