ABSTRACT
After some concerted searching, the authors located a list developed by a market research firm that fulfilled many of our requirements. This was a list of private-sector organizations in greater New York that were known to have purchased computing equipment. At the beginning of the pilot study, the authors were more certain of which features of earlier research they wanted to avoid than of which steps to take in our own right. They did know that they wanted to focus on the role of computing in organizations, preferably the widest possible variety of them. On the strength of the results of the pilot study, the National Science Foundation provided funding for a full-scale survey of computer use. Thus the authors began a period of intensive interviewing and data analysis lasting from 1985 to 1989. The structure of the 1993 interview closely paralleled that of the survey-like aspects of the earlier one.
