The Digital Coast survey was executed for the Digital Coast Roundtable by Survey.com.

The study was conducted in cooperation with Pricewaterhouse Coopers and Metro Information Services and was sponsored by the City of Los Angeles, Pacific Bell, Riordan & McKinzie, LARTA, LAWNMOWER, The SoCal Tech Calendar, and SoftAware.

The primary objective of this study was to determine the economic impact, nature, and needs of the New Media industry in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara, and Ventura counties.

Specifically, the study aimed to map the "Digital Coast" region and establish definitive trends and metrics in areas ranging from employment to capital to policy to infrastructure and resources.

In this study, "New Media" is defined as industries that include the following segments of products and services:

• Content design and development
• Content publishing
• Enabling technologies/tools -- communications and hardware
• Enabling technologies/tools -- software
• Consulting/Professional Services
• Electronic commerce

An online survey methodology was employed to collect data from Digital Coast companies. Data collection took place between April 20 and June 30, 2000.

Emails were sent inviting about 9,500 potential respondents to participate in the survey. The email message contained an embedded URL to the survey, and a PIN to access the survey.

The survey was also hosted on the Digital Coast Roundtable Web site.

A total of 979 people responded to the invitation. Some respondents were disqualified in the screener questions. Approximately 580 surveys were submitted and included in the final sample.

The results of this study are accurate within a 4% error margin at a 95% confidence level.