The Digital Divide for Hispanic Americans

This study reports the data analysis of a probability sample of Anglo and Hispanic adults. The research objective guiding the study concerned discovering differences there may be in Internet usage between Anglo and Hispanic Americans. Twelve hypotheses were derived from past research and tested in this study. The findings indicate that Anglo Americans are more likely than Hispanic Americans to use the Internet and are higher on net usage frequency after becoming users. The data also show that Anglo Americans are more likely than Hispanic Americans to achieve interpersonal communication benefits from using the Internet. No significant differences were found for political communication benefits between the two groups. We also found significant ethnic differences in skills necessary for using the Internet. The process of testing these hypotheses provides more clarity of what contributes to the gaps between Hispanic and Anglo Americans in using the Internet. Overall, it appears that income, education, and ethnicity are all important to Internet usage, but in specific and differing ways.