5.2.1 Age, Gender and Ethnicity

The researcher’s public library experience led her to suspect that whakapapa researchers might be younger on the whole than genealogists that have been studied in earlier research. Kuglin (2004) found that 54% of respondents were aged 61 years or older and these results were very much in line with North American data gathered by Lambert (1998) and Drake (2001). In this study respondents were noticeably younger with 69% of respondents being under 51 years of age (Chart 1)(Appendix 2, Question 22). In particular respondents from Manukau were much younger, with more than half the respondents falling within the relatively youthful age range of 21 – 30 years. No respondents from Manukau were older than 50 years. This may be partially explained by the fact that Manukau is a comparatively youthful city with an average age 4 years younger than the national average, however it seems unlikely that this could account completely for the absence of any elderly or retirement age whakapapa researchers. Further research into users at this library may be required to more fully understand the high numbers of younger whakapapa researchers found there.
Chart 1. Although the age of whakapapa researchers differs significantly from those investigated in earlier research, in terms of gender, results were quite similar to other studies. In this study there was a slightly lower percentage of female researchers (59%) than Kuglin (2004) and Drake (2001) but this was similar to Lambert’s (1998) results (Chart 2)(Appendix 2, Question 21). In all of the research undertaken female researchers have significantly outnumbered males and this tendency is confirmed by the data in this study also.
Chart 2. As expected the vast majority of respondents had Māori ancestry (Chart 3). It was the researcher’s experience however, that whakapapa researchers were not exclusively those with Māori ancestry and this was confirmed by the 3 respondents who identified themselves as non-Māori. This question (Appendix 2,Question 23) was included to get some idea of how many whakapapa researchers fit into this category as no previous research has looked at this and it was hoped that data from other questions could be analysed with reference to the ethnicity of the respondent. Due to the small number of non-Māori respondents it was decided that this would not provide meaningful results.
Chart 3.