MEASURING AUDIENCE REACTION
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The television ratings business has moved beyond measuring audience size to measuring audience reaction. Researchers measure audience reaction with numerous methods including focus groups, galvanic skin check and prototypes.
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AUDIENCE ANALYSIS
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Traditional demographic polling methods divided people by gender, age and other easily identifiable population characteristics. Today, media people use sophisticated lifestyle breakdowns such as geodemographics and psychographics to match the content of their publications, broadcast programs and advertising to the audiences they seek.
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APPLIED AND THEORETICAL RESEARCH
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Media-sponsored research looks for ways to build audiences, to enhance profits and to program responsibly. In contrast, mass communication scholarship asks theoretical questions that can yield new understandings, regardless of whether there is a practical application.
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MEASURING AUDIENCE SIZE
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Newspaper and Magazine Audits
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Broadcast Ratings
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An audit checks circulation claims to assure advertisers that the system is honest. An example of this is the Audit Bureau of Circulation which was formed in 1914 to remove the temptation for publishers to inflate their claims to attract advertisers and hike ad rates.
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Mass media needs to know the number and kinds of people they reach. The A.C. Neilsen Co. tracks network television viewership. Nielsen installs meters to record when television sets are on and to which channels they are tuned.
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PUBLIC OPINION SAMPLING
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Quota Sampling
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Probability Sampling
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This sampling technique surveys cross-sections of the whole population. Gallup abandoned quota sampling because he could not pinpoint public opinion closer than 4 percentage points on average.
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Probability sampling theoretically gives everyone in the population being sampled an equal chance to be surveyed. The error rate for this method is less than 2 percentage points.
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