READERSHIP SURVEY

Readership and Circulation

For print media, the two main measures of audience are readership and circulation. Circulation relates to the number of copies circulated to the public. Readership is the number of readers - either of a specific issue of the publication, or over a certain time period, such as 3 months. Circulation is measured from sales figures, but readership is measured from surveys of the population.

Readership is practically always larger than circulation, because of "pass-on readers" - in other words, each copy sold is normally read by some people as well as its buyer. The only way that readership can be smaller than circulation is if some buyers don't read the publication themselves, but immediately pass it on to others. Normally, this only happens when the "buyers" aren't paying for the publication, as with controlled-circulation publications.

Measuring circulation

As circulation is defined as the number of copies circulated, this should be a simple, unambiguous measure of a publication's success. If only it were so easy! In fact, defining circulation can be quite a problem - because "circulated" can have several different meanings. When a publication is circulated mainly through sales, the circulation can be the number of copies sold. But even that is not simple. Some factors that complicate the counting are:

• If copies are sold through wholesalers, some copies may not reach the public. (Perhaps they arrived too late, or were spoiled.)
• Copies are sometimes given away.
• Unsold copies may be returned, months later, reducing a circulation figure that had been calculated earlier.
• Many publications now have part or all of their content on websites. If somebody reads an issue on the web, should this be counted in the circulation figures? And if the same computer accesses the issue twice on the web, should that count as a circulation of two copies?
• Circulation can vary from issue to issue, with marked seasonal trends for some publications. So the average circulation, over a year, might be very different from the circulation for a particular issue.

Ways of measuring readership

There are many ways to measure readership. The best known measure is (1) average issue readership, which can be derived in several different ways. Other measures include (2) reach, coverage, or cumulative audience, (3) frequency, (4) the Starch method, (5) readers per copy, and (6) eye-tracking. Other measures related to readership include appreciation levels and actions taken as a result of reading. 

 

1. Average issue readership

The number of people who have read some or all of the average issue of a publication. This is in many ways the least misleading measure, and probably the most widely used. If you divide average issue readership by average circulation, you can calculate the average readers per copy - but the later after publication the survey is done, the higher will be the readers per copy.

There are at least four ways of measuring average issue readership, and disputes between proponents of the various ways have generated a lot of heat over the last few decades. The four main ways are (a) "Through the book", (b) "First Read Yesterday", (c) readership diaries, and (d) "recent reading". 

1a. "Through the book" (TTB)

This is a long-established method, beginning in the USA around the 1950s: perhaps the most accurate method, but also expensive - which explains why it is now seldom used. This involves showing respondents an issue of each publication whose readership is being measured. The interviewer hands the issue to the respondent, invites them to flick through it, and say whether or not they have seen that issue before.

The usual question asked is "Have you read or looked into this issue, before just now?" The phrase "read or looked into" (in French: "vu/lu") means that if they have flicked through its pages for a few seconds in a shop, they should answer Yes. This criterion will obviously produce much higher readership figures than if the question had been "Have you read most of this issue?" 

1b. Recent Reading

This is now the most common method for measuring readership. Unlike the previous three methods, this one collects data not on a specific issue, but on the title in general. The form of question is "How long ago did you last read Publication X?"

Though this method is popular because it is easy to do, it has technical problems in using the answers to calculate average issue readership: when a publication is read in more than one issue period, or when several issues are read in the same period. Another problem is that people find it difficult to remember exactly when they did something, if it wasn't in the last few days. A common effect is the "telescoping of memory" in which people think something happened more recently than it really did. To some extent, however, the various problems can cancel out.

1c. First read yesterday (FRY)

This applies only to daily newspapers. As the name of the method suggests, interviewers ask, for a group of newspapers, "Which of these did you first read yesterday?" The principle is that if a lot of "yesterdays" are averaged out, the data will produce average issue readership. This method is mostly used in Europe, and is often done by telephone. Of all four methods discussed here, it produces data the soonest. One weakness of the method (when done by phone) is that publications with similar titles tend to be confused. Well-known publications with declining circulations tend to be over-reported, because of such confusion - but the confusion applies mostly to magazines, and this method is most suitable for newspapers.

This is an expensive method, because it requires a daily survey, for daily publications. However it can also be done weekly, becoming "first read in the last 7 days", though some accuracy is lost because of poor memories; figures for weekly publications tend to be over-estimates.

1d. Readership diaries

With this method, homes are chosen at random throughout the study area. Interviewers go to those homes, and persuade people to fill in a readership diary, which often runs for a month. During that time, the diary-keepers are asked to write in the title of each newspaper or magazine they read, and which issue it was. Other information collected includes how much of it was read, whether it was the first time they had read this issue, and how they obtained the issue.

Readership surveys don't strictly need data on readers' opinions of the publications, but such questions are often included, because one of the biggest motivations for people to complete a readership diary is the chance to give their opinions and influence the editorial content to better meet their needs. In terms of value for money, readership diaries work very well, collecting a lot of data quite cheaply - though not quickly. As long as respondents are motivated enough to fill in their diaries, this method should produce more accurate data than the Recent Reading or First Read Yesterday methods.

2. Reach (also known as coverage or cumulative audience)

As with broadcast audiences, reach is the number (or percentage) of different people who read the publication. This can be measured in two ways: within one issue (the numbers reading specific pages or articles) and between issues (the cumulative audience of people who have read or looked into at least one issue in the specified time period - e.g. a week or a month (for dailies) , three months (for weeklies), or a year (for monthlies). In Britain, reach, in the sense of cumulative audience, is often known as coverage. 

3. Frequency

Average frequency is mathematically related to Average Issue Readership and Reach. Simply:
Average frequency = average issue readership x number of issues/ reach

The number of issues relates to the period being studied - the number of issues over which the average readership and the reach were calculated. The average readership times the number of issues can be thought of as the total number of readings - assuming that each reader read an issue only once. Advertisers use the terms impacts and impressions in this sense. 

4. The Starch method

This method is named after Daniel Starch, a US media researcher who was prominent around the 1950s. It's normally used to measure advertising audiences, but can also be applied to articles or editorial pages. For each item (whether an ad, a page, or an article) the following measure are made:

The percentage of respondents who...

• noted it - i.e. remembered seeing that item (or any part of it), when interviewed and shown it;
• associated it with the correct brand or publication (when details are not given in the interview);
• read most of it (or claimed to have done, when interviewed); or
• read some of it;

Researchers have found that high "noted" scores for ads are related to favourable attitude toward the advertised brand, and also with a high stated probability of purchase. 

5. Readers per copy

This is the link between circulation and readership. If you know the circulation, estimate the readership with a survey, then divide total readers by the total circulation, you can calculate the average number of readers per copy. Because advertisers are more interested in readership than in circulation, it's worthwhile for a publication to aim at maximizing the number of readers per copy. However it's a difficult figure to change.

6. Eye tracking

A completely different method of audience research is eye tracking. This sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, but has been around for years. Volunteers wear an electronically equipped pair of glasses or mask. This is linked to a video camera, which records exactly what they are looking at, at each moment. A recently developed system is much more comfortable for users, dispensing with the helmet and chin-rest: it simply has a camera below a computer monitor (see tobii.srlabs.it. It can track a viewer's gaze to within 1 degree.