Core Research
GlobalWebIndex began its ongoing research back in 2009, in response to what was a clear need in the market for a harmonized, global survey on how internet behaviors were evolving.
Starting with an annual study in the first year, it became bi-annual throughout 2010, 2011 and 2012 before being run each quarter from the start of 2013 onwards. By early 2019, we have run 33 separate waves of research.
Over time, our country coverage has increased. Beginning with 16 markets in 2009, we were running our harmonized study in 36 countries by the end of 2016. We incorporated six more countries in 2017 to bring our total to 42; Colombia and Denmark in Q2 2018 took it to 44, and Romania in Q4 2018 bring it to 45.
GlobalWebIndex offers a co-launch option for new markets by evenly sharing the research costs with a client for the first year of research. Following the initial paid-for four waves of research GlobalWebIndex will continue Core research in the new market while absorbing the full research cost.
Mobile Surveys
Until the end of 2016, the majority of respondents completed our Core research via PCs, laptops or tablets. As a relatively long survey where questions were developed with the larger screens of PCs/ laptops in mind, it was not suitable for running via mobiles (where surveys need to be short and include relatively simple question formats). This had made it difficult to launch into new emerging markets, especially in Africa, where most internet users are mobile-first (and where significant minorities might be mobile-only).
In 2017, GWI has therefore launched a mobile version of its Core study. It contains a selection of 50 questions from the full Core study, but in a mobile-compatible format. This survey will be run alongside the traditional Core study, with the results from both Core + Mobile being merged together and then published as one dataset.
For more details please see our Research & Methodology section