A new study from AptiQuant suggests there may be a correlation between a web surfer's browser selection and his or her cognitive abilities. The Vancouver-based psychometric consulting firm based its conclusions on the results of an IQ test it administered online to more than 100,000 English-speaking subjects.
According to AptiQuant's report, individuals on the lower side of the IQ scale tend to resist performing browser upgrades. "The subjects using any version of Internet Explorer ranked significantly lower on an average than others" on the IQ test, the firm's researchers reported. Out of all the IE versions, however, "subjects using IE8 fared a little better."
About 34 percent of the test subjects with the lowest scores were using IE7, AptiQuant's researchers noted. IE7 usage declined to less than four percent for the group with the highest IQ scores.
Opera Users Are Smarter
AptiQuant found no statistically significant differences between the IQ scores of subjects using Chrome, Firefox and Safari. On the other hand, these subjects had a higher IQ score, on average, than IE users. Additionally, the participants with the highest IQ test scores were using Opera, Camino and IE in combination with Chrome Frame.
AptiQuant's researchers compared their results to another unreleased study of a similar nature undertaken in 2006. "The comparison clearly suggests that more people on the higher side of the IQ scale have moved away from Internet Explorer in the last five years," the report's authors wrote.
Still, AptiQuant's survey didn't account for the fact that many business professionals have no choice when it comes to the browsers they use for business purposes, since IT administrators often make these decisions. "The people who took the test could either be using their home computers or office computers," admitted AptiQuant President Leonard Howard in an e-mail Friday.
IT Considerations
Part of the resistance to change that AptiQuant's study attributes to the cognitive abilities of its test subjects may be due to the fact that enterprises tend to adopt new technologies at a slower rate than consumers. That's because IT administrators must consider a variety of issues that may be far more important to business goals than innovation.
IT departments are often locked into specific IE versions because of factors such as the operating system in use as well as legacy issues surrounding the performance of business documents, forms and processes that may not function the same if another browser is used. This last issue represents one of the major reasons why many businesses have not adopted the free OpenOffice instead of Microsoft's expensive Office productivity suite.
The continuous use of older versions of IE by millions of people around the world causes major headaches for web developers, which AptiQuant blamed on Microsoft's adoption of technologies in older IE versions that do not comply with web standards. "This trend not only makes their job tougher, but has also pulled back innovation by at least a decade," AptiQuant said.
These days, however, Microsoft recognizes that continuing use of its aging IE6 browser is an impediment to innovation. For this reason, earlier this year Microsoft inaugurated a campaign to encourage users of IE6 to upgrade to a modern browser such as IE8 or even IE9, which features compatibility with web standards such as HTML5.
Global IE6 usage currently stands at 10.7 percent -- down 7.5 percentage points from the same time last year. In the United States, however, IE6 usage currently amounts to just two percent.
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