Basic Digital Skills UK Report 2017

Ipsos was recently commissioned by Lloyds Bank to help produce a report to look into the level of digital capability across the UK, using different demographic and technology ownership groups to highlight any differences. Last year, the 2016 Basic Digital Skills study found that 77% of the UK population had the basic level of digital skills. However, there were significant demographic, geographic and technographic disparities across the population. In 2017, Lloyds Banking Group and Doteveryone commissioned a repeat of the study to monitor any changes in the level of digital capabilities in comparison to last year.

The study again focused on 5 key areas:

1. Managing information
2. Problem solving
3. Communicating
4. Creating
5. Transacting

The key findings from the study were as follows:

• 79% of the UK adult population have Basic Digital Skills, up from 77% in 2016
• This leaves 21%, or an estimated 11.5 million adults in the UK who don’t have the required level of Basic Digital Skills 
• This slight increase overall is part of what appears to be an overall broadening of the populations’ online skillset with significant increases in those claiming to be able to communicate, transact, create and problem solve online 
• The increases at an overall level are most prevalent certain demographic groups: 
  • 15-24s have a near universal level of Basic Digital Skills (97%) with their capability to create and problem solve up on 2015. At the other end of the age spectrum, this year has also seen an increased level of digital skills amongst 65+ - up to nearly half
  • In 2017, we have seen significant increases amongst males but females have stayed static
  • Encouragingly this year has been the uplifts amongst the C2DE demographic, although they are still below the levels seen amongst ABC1s

Downloads

• Download a copy of the Lloyds Bank UK Consumer Digital Index report 2017 using Ipsos data
• Download appendix

Technical Details

• The study comprised Ipsos Connect’s quarterly Tech Tracker using Ipsos CAPIBUS to get a truly nationally representative view of device ownership and usage in Great Britain amongst adults aged 15+
• The CAPIBUS uses face-to-face interviewing to ensure no online bias, and is uniquely sampled based on Output Areas to ensure a robust sample
  For this study, the Tech Tracker was boosted to 4,000 interviews and interviewing was also conducted in Northern Ireland to ensure UK-wide figures
• Two digital skill questions, containing eleven digital tasks, were added to the Tech Tracker:
  • What tasks could you do if asked?
  • Which tasks have you done in the last three months?
• The answers to these questions were combined to identify a participant’s digital skills; those who said they could do all five skills were classified as having Basic Digital Skills
• Where comparisons between sub-groups have been made, the results have been statistically tested at a 95% confidence interval and any significant differences are highlighted by a directional arrow