Numbers of participants

Hi, do we know how many people are part of the quantified self community now in December 2019? And are there any good estimates of what proportion of the population (e.g. in the US and the UK) routinely use some form of self-tracking in their everyday lives? I’m a UK sociologist who has worked for many years on longitudinal studies with thousands of participants, and I’m really interested in how people are now doing their own research with an n of 1. I am very happy to share my ‘findings’ in the future,
many thanks
Jane

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Does being “part of the quantified self community” include people who participate in meetups and online forums, or anyone who does some form of self-tracking?

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Hi thanks for your question
Ideally I’d love to know how many people are doing any kind of self tracking, but also to know how many people are more engaged and take part in forums and meet ups.
I guess the priority is knowing how many people are now doing some form of self tracking as part of their everyday lives - even if they have never heard of the quantified-self movement…
any advice/responses much appreciated
:slight_smile:

Jane

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I wish there were more recent data on this, but the best study was in 2013: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2013/06/04/the-self-tracking-data-explosion/

It seems unlikely that the number/% has decreased, but that’s hardly an academically credible assertion!

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Many thanks for this link - yes I had seen this type of summary from a few years ago but was hoping for something more recent…I’ll keep looking and let you know on this forum if i find something
all best
Jane

I very much wish somebody would update this research. I predict that while the overall #s will have increased for demographic reasons alone (at least for tracking with technology, prevalence increases with age), there are some very interesting secondary questions about which we know very little: What is the pattern of starting and stopping, what are the key topics, etc.

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