The NRS estimates reflect the potential audience for advertising within the print publication. The advertising in the print publication is different from that carried by the related website, so it is important to measure the print audience separately.

In the NRS readership questions, respondents are asked (and reminded) to exclude any reading done online.

Between 2004 and 2008 NRS ran a test to monitor whether, despite these instructions, some respondents did include online reading in their print readership claims. A dozen or so titles were included, chosen on the basis that they had websites with relatively large audiences.

The results of the test were encouraging. In some cases Average Issue Readers had read the publication on the Internet as well as in print, but the level of solus Internet readership was low.

NRS is in the process of developing a methodology to measure publisher websites, as well as print publications. This will produce a separate estimate for each platform, but also an estimate of the combined reach (de-duplicated).

This is a complex development which involves:

• Asking respondents to select all the publications and publisher websites that they have seen at the same time within the interview.
• Using a ‘Personalised Media List’ technique to ensure that the list of publications and websites shown to each respondent is not so long that data quality suffers.
• Developing an on-screen self-completion questionnaire.

Development is at an early stage and a number of phases of testing are planned. Please contact NRS if you would like to know more.

Since 2006, the NRS interview has included the UKOM Establishment Survey. NRS’s high quality sample of 36,000 respondents per year is used by UKOM as the basis for the definitive measure of internet use in Great Britain.

The UKOM Establishment Survey data are available to all NRS subscribers. Respondents who have accessed the internet in the past 12 months are asked:

• How often they use the internet
• Where they use the internet – at home, at work, using a mobile device etc
• When they last used the internet
• Whether their household has broadband
• What equipment they use to access the internet at home
• How many laptops or PCs they have at home
• Whether they use the net at home for work purposes
• Do they shop online?

The NRS interview also covers activities on the internet.