During April 1998, 1,671 MCSEs responded to the internet survey rating each of the 24 job tasks on how useful the certification process was to their own job performance' on each job task, using a nine-point scale from (1) Not at all useful to (9)Extremely useful. Respondents had deen computer professionals for an average of 7.5 years and had held their MCSEs certification for 1.5 years. They were overwhelmingly male and the majority was employed in the US (59 per cent). Forty-one percent of the respondents came from 66 other countries.