NUF Survey Results - Lifestyle

Part 4 of the NUF Survey results. Table of contents at the bottom.

LIFESTYLE
This section is devoted to the habits and life situations of NUF users.

NOVEL PREFERENCES
The majority (~60%) of respondents did not prefer novels of any particular country/language. Respondents who specified a preferred provenance for their novels were split about 6:5:3, CN:JP:KR. No respondents answered that they preferred any other Asian language’s novels.

Respondents who preferred CN novels generally expressed enjoying specific Chinese genres, mostly action (xianxia in particular) and Danmei. Respondents who preferred JP novels generally expressed enjoyment of certain aspects of the setting, the variety available, or harems. Respondents who preferred KR generally expressed enjoyment of the characters/protagonist.

Every category of respondent generally had a few respondents who expressed their preference as a result of dislike for at least one of the other regions’ novels. However, in all, 80% of respondents stated that they did not dislike any region’s novels in particular. Respondents who did express dislike for a particular region were split about 5:3:1, JP:CN:KR. Respondents who disliked JP novels generally gave the reason of disliking features of the protagonist, particularly for being too “childish”, “beta”, “dense”, etc. They also tended to dislike harem and “rapey” protagonists. Respondents who disliked CN novels generally expressed distaste with novel repetition and excessive length, as well as overly sociopathic protagonists. Few responses were given for why KR novels were disliked, though there was some dissatisfaction with overly greedy protagonists.

While genre was a common concern for choosing a preferred region, it’s interesting to see that the protagonist tended to be a pretty common deal-breaker for each region’s novels, even if the disliked traits were different depending on the region. Harem was a reason both for preference and for dislike of JP novels, showing that it’s something of a polarizing trope. KR novels had the fewest number of preferences and dislikes, which makes sense given that far fewer KR novels have been translated comparative to the other two. KR novels have a higher ratio of preference to dislike than the other two, which speaks well of the novels that have been translated.

Oddly enough, people who preferred CN novels were considerably more likely to rate themselves as “book-smart” than those who preferred JP novels, rating themselves on average 1 point higher on a 10 point scale, and were considerably more likely to rate themselves as “street smart” than those who preferred both JP and KR novels, rating themselves on average 0.8 and 1.5 points higher, respectively. While they were also more likely to consider themselves book-smart than KR novel preferrers, it was not a significant difference. While it’s difficult to ascertain whether this is indicative of a real difference in ability, at the very least, people who preferred CN novels had more confidence in those areas. What those who preferred JP novels have going for them is that, on average, they exercised about 30 minutes longer per week than those who preferred CN novels.

On the other hand, the only correlation associated with disliking novels of a particular region was that people who disliked CN novels were more likely to respond positively to the question “Wouldn’t it be fun to chuck it all and go live on a sailboat?” Due to a limited number of responses it’s somewhat unlikely that this correlation holds any particular meaning.

In retrospect, I probably should have asked for a favorite genre of novel as well. Not doing so was an oversight on my part.

RECREATION & EXERCISE
NUF users are generally the most hardcore of readers. Respondents on average spent 5.3 hours daily reading novels and greater than 95% of them spent more time reading novels and using NU/NUF than any other recreation. Time on NU/NUF was slightly more restrained, with an average of 3 hours spent on it daily. Of course, this is likely a much higher figure than the actual average amount of time spent on NUF, if only because those who spend more time there were more likely to see and respond to my survey. Users spent an average of 2.5 hours on other recreation; naturally, the more time reading, the less time for other activities. From those who provided information about it, other recreation appeared to mainly be video games.

Exercise...was not a priority for most NUF users. There was, however, a small group of outliers comprising of about 5% of respondents who exercised 2-3 hours a day. This group shared a couple of traits, such as all being from Asia and owning dogs, however, there weren’t enough respondents in the group to come to conclusions of any significance. Even with their inclusion, on average, NUF users got 2.5 hours of exercise a week, with the majority not exercising at all.

There were a couple of interesting correlations. People who spent more time reading were also more likely to own a pet. Strangely, there was a also a strong correlation between spending over 6 hours a day reading novels and being unlikely to report seeing someone shoplifting. Maybe all those protagonists going “not my problem” has an effect. On the other hand, people who spent greater amounts of time on NU/NUF were generally less likely to consider themselves street-smart and less likely to consider themselves humorous. Seeing this, while I was expecting a correlation between time spent on NU and introversion, this didn’t actually appear to be the case. There weren’t any real correlations apparent for the amount of time users spent on other forms of recreation. There was a slight tendency for those who spent more time on other recreation to not be in a relationship, but this wasn’t statistically significant.

There were two significant correlations for amount of exercise. Firstly, female respondents were much more likely to exercise than male respondents. Secondly, those who exercised more were more likely to like the taste of beer, or have even tried it in the first place. The first could perhaps be explained by female respondents being more health conscious or perhaps more concerned with their appearance. As for beer, maybe most of the users who haven’t tried it have been younger and haven’t yet felt the terrifying effects of getting old and fat, so aren’t inspired to exercise as much….but I didn’t observe any correlation with age, so that explanation probably isn’t valid. There wasn’t any correlation with extroversion or confidence in appearance, either, so it’s probably not as though people who exercised more enjoyed going to more parties and thus got more used to the taste of beer.

FAMILY
Slightly over 70% of respondents reported being raised by married parents. This is actually slightly higher than the percentage of people raised by married people in the US, which was the only country I could get reliable data for. Given, though, the number of users from relatively more socially conservative countries in SEA, this seems somewhat low. Indeed, looking through the data showed that >90% of SEA and South Asian respondents were raised by married parents, or if not, then by grandparents, including all Filipino respondents. On the other hand, relatively fewer people from Europe and Australia were raised by married parents or grandparents, with about 35% reporting being raised by single or separated parents. This number was actually slightly higher for American respondents, with around 40% reporting being raised by single or separated parents, however, American respondents were also more likely to be raised by grandparents; about 60% of respondents who were raised by their grandparents were American. Anyway, the actual figures for those not raised by married parents were 14% raised by a single parent, 8% raised by separated parents, 7% raised by grandparents, and the rest had some other situation growing up. In any case, while I had difficulty finding reliable data for Asian countries, for the US, at least, respondents seemed more likely to come from a non-traditional family situation than the population at large. While I couldn’t find data on the percentage of children raised in such situations from Europe and Australia, judging by recent divorce rates they seem relatively more likely to be raised by married parents than the norm.

NUF users were asked to rate, on a scale of 0 to 10, their closeness to the people who raised them. The average of all responses was about 7.04. Closeness was correlated with domestic situation; the primary difference was between those raised by married parents and all other categories. Respondents raised by married parents rated their closeness on average at 7.24, those raised by single parents averaged 6.64, those raised by separated parents averaged 6.33, and those raised by grandparents averaged 6.00. The difference in averages between married parents, single parents, and other categories were significant; the difference between separated parents and grandparents was not. It’s a somewhat uncomfortable topic to broach, but it seems that, even if family situation does not correlate with happiness, job satisfaction, or any other measures of long term success, unfortunately, it certainly does have an impact on the relationship between child and parent.

However, other than familial matters, there was one factor which very strongly correlated with closeness, and that was religiosity. There’s a phrase, “the family that prays together, stays together,” and it seems like that’s more than just a catchy aphorism. There was over a point of difference between those who considered themselves religious and those who didn’t, from 6.80 to 7.90. This difference only grew larger for respondents who rated themselves as more serious about their faith. Conversely, closeness suffered for those whose were nonreligious with a religious family.

There was a preference for NUF users to be the eldest child in their family, with 40% of respondents in that category. Comparatively, 28% were the youngest, 21% were a middle child, and 11% were only children. I’ve got some colloquial evidence that eldest children are more likely to be bookish or otherwise fit some of the traits associated with heavy readers, but nothing concrete, and I didn’t observe any correlations in particular associated with these groupings.

Respondents were also asked to rate their closeness to their siblings; if they had multiple siblings they were to answer for their closest sibling. Closeness to siblings was slightly but significantly lower than closeness to parents/guardians, at 6.46. Furthermore, there was no particular correlation with religiosity. Oddly enough, there was one correlation of significant strength, and that was that respondents who were closer to their siblings were also more likely to have a better opinion of their own appearance. Perhaps all that teasing when you were kids actually impacted your self-esteem? It’s not something for which I have an immediate explanation.

FRIENDS & PETS
In terms of friends, respondents were asked how many close friends they had and how satisfied they were with their number of friends. All in all, NUF users had an average of three close friends, though this includes some particularly gregarious users who were outliers. The median and mode number of friends was two. Oddly, while about 20% of respondents answered that they had three close friends and 15% answered that they had five, less than 5% reported having four. While four is considered unlucky in some regions of the world, I somehow doubt that’s a valid explanation for this discrepancy. Maybe 5 just seemed like a good number. In terms of satisfaction with their number of friends, once again using a 0-10 scale, respondents reported an average satisfaction of 6.81.

There were a couple of interesting correlations with matters of friendship. Some of them were predictable, but still quite fascinating. Firstly, a lack of a correlation where one might be expected: there wasn’t actually a correlation between respondents’ satisfaction with their number of friends and their reported number of close friends. Secondly, and of greatest statistical significance, happiness showed a strong positive correlation with number of close friends. Notably, happiness showed no correlation with satisfaction in the number of friends, so it appears that quality over quantity in friends is the way to go for a happier life. Thirdly, there was actually a slight negative correlation between respondents’ reported religiosity and their number of close friends. It appears that being seriously religious is actually something of a liability when trying to make friends; I’ve also heard that people are less likely to like atheists even if they themselves were nonreligious, but that wasn’t a trend I could find in the data so maybe society’s just become a little more heathen over time. Fourthly, those who were more satisfied with their number of friends were also slightly more likely to answer positively to the sailboat question (“Wouldn’t it be fun to chuck it all and go live on a sailboat?”)....perhaps they felt like they had too many friends? Fifthly, younger people tended to be less satisfied with their number of friends. I’m sure this correlation makes an eminent amount of sense to any heavy reader who remembers what being in school was like. Sixthly and finally, people with more close friends were also much more likely to answer “No” or “I don’t know” to the question of whether they’d accept eternal life; perhaps having more close friends makes it harder to bear the thought of living on and seeing their friends die?

One more question directly relating to friends was whether respondents knew anybody in person (not solely over the internet) who also used NU and/or read novels. Approximately 38% of respondents reported that they did. Most of these respondents were from SEA, so it appears that SEA was the most culturally unified in novel reading.

Around 40% of respondents were pet owners. The most popular pet among NUF users was a dog, with 24% of all respondents being dog owners. Following that were cat owners, comprising about 19% of respondents. Ten percent of respondents owned some other animal (Including a degu, which I had never heard of). Note that these figures add up to more than 100% because some owners had multiple pets. There was a single significant correlation which was non-intuitive enough for me to think that it may have just been random chance within the accepted margin of error (assuming 0.05 to be significant); users with pets were less likely to be afraid of death.

(YET ANOTHER) NU SECTION
A few random questions relating to NU were asked.

Firstly, a few qualitative questions, what got respondents into reading webnovels and where did they hear about NU? For the first question, the answer appeared to mostly be that readers had first gotten into anime or manga/manhwa. Then, they either ran out of interesting works in those two media or looked up the origins of one that caught their interest in particular. Otherwise, some readers had started out on Wattpad or RRL and then discovered the translated webnovel scene. For the second question, the primary method of discovering NU seems to be just having it pop up while doing a web search for a novel. Other than that, users were directed here by links and users on the now-defunct Aho-Updates, translation sites like Baka-Tsuki, or through manga sites like Batoto. There were also a couple of people who discovered novels and NU via word of mouth, but they were certainly in the minority.

About 27% of respondents said that they were a translator of some kind. Nota bene, this doesn’t necessarily mean they translate novels to or from an Asian language. In fact, the largest group were those who said that they translated documents to or from English for their company. CN translators made up the next largest group; given the prevalence of Mandarin/Cantonese as spoken language in SEA and the relative commonality of bilingual Chinese and English speakers compared to JP and KR, this makes sense. About 15% of the translating respondents were JP webnovel translators. There were also a couple of respondents who reported translating song lyrics. One of the more interesting responses was a European respondent who translated scientific research and articles.

Lastly, while @Parth37955 and @Westeller had a good showing in the various popularity contests, the survey showed that, of the mods listed on the staff list + @Nom de Plume , @Tony still stole the show with 41% of the votes. Westeller did slightly better than Parth, with 15% compared to 12%. About 16% of respondents didn’t particularly prefer any of the mods. In any case, this question was designed poorly, partially on purpose, so it’s probably not incredibly accurate.

It seems like the full results were too long to be included in a single blog post, so here's a handy table of contents to which I'll be adding links once I make the posts.

• Introduction
• Demographics
  • Location & Language
  • Age
  • Gender, Sexuality, & Romance
  • Education & Employment
  • Religion

• Meta-Survey
  • Useless Questions
  • Bad Faith
  • Declining to Answer

• Lifestyle (You are here)
  • Novel Preferences
  • Recreation & Exercise
  • Family
  • Friends & Pets
  • (Yet Another) NU Section

• Personality & Society
  • Happiness
  • Self-Harm & Psychiatry
  • Self-Evaluation
  • Social Views
  • Bonus Round: NUF Dating
  • Experiences
  • Preferences

• Survey Reflection