By John Timmer
July 03, 2008 - 12:21PM CT

The Pew Charitable Trusts' Internet and American Life project has been commissioning surveys since the late '90s that provide perhaps the clearest picture of the role of the Internet in the US. Their latest survey is out, and the data once again paint a picture of Internet use that may seem foreign to the readership of a technology site.

When it comes to access, it appears that those who can get and afford broadband already have it, while a substantial population just isn't interested in faster speeds. Meanwhile, a full quarter of the US population doesn't seem interested in getting online at all. The survey (PDF; raw data available) was performed by random dialing in April and May of this year.

Over 2,200 adults responded to at least some of the questions, giving the numbers a margin of error in the two to three percent range. It started by asking whether the respondents were satisfied with the way the country is headed; the responses indicated a record amount of dissatisfaction, which may have influenced the poll by causing people to answer the remaining questions from a jaundiced perspective.

For the most part, many of the answers appeared to be little changed for the last several years. The data for many questions is noisy, in that absolute numbers bounced around within a narrow range that's close to the statistical margin of error; given that, it's not clear that there have been significant trends since 2005 or earlier.