RAJAR Looks At New Methodologies

The difficulty of assessing the growing number of new radio stations has prompted RAJAR to experiment with three new methodologies. As well as measuring new stations, RAJAR is also interested in the relative merits of sampling on an ‘individuals’ basis – one adult and one or two children per home – as opposed to the current method of sampling all individuals aged 4+ in each home.

The three pilot experiments are:

• Alternative Pre-printed + Household Placement: this uses a new pre-printed diary design, displaying the station list down the vertical axis and time bands across the page. While providing more space for new stations, this means that four pages per day instead of two are required. This pilot will generate around 3,000 completed diaries from adults aged 15+.
• Alternative Pre-printed Diary + Individual Placement: using the same diary method as above, it will be based on an ‘individual’ sample – one adult aged 15+ per household will be interviewed. RAJAR believes that the use of an ‘individuals’ sampling method will provide a more ‘dispersed’ sample because the risk of similar listening patterns amongst household members is eliminated. This will be carried out among approximately 2,300 adults aged 15+.
• Card Sort Diary + Individual Placement: this does not use a diary with a pre-printed station list. Each respondent will be presented with a set of cards which includes all the stations available in the sampling area. Using these cards a customised station list is built into the diary, using printed labels. This will be carried out among 3,500 adults aged 15+.

Field briefings for these tests took place during the last two weeks of March and the results will be available to the Specification Working Group at the end of September.

…RAJAR is contributing, financially and technically, to an American research company’s diary experiment into UK radio listening. Arbitron will use a ‘soft roster’ technique where each respondent is asked to write their own personal station listing into the diary using a customised ‘bookmark’, which carries a list of available stations, as a reference and reminder. RAJAR will have access to these results when they are made available.

RAJAR: 0171 584 3003