Open Access

Interview

DS-CAPI

The interview is conducted in the respondent's home using DS-CAPI (Double-Screen Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing). The interviewer has a laptop on which the interview is programmed; this laptop is radio-linked to a second screen which the respondent looks at. The interviewer reads out a predetermined sequence of questions; the appropriate prompts appear on the respondent's screen as the interview progresses, and the interviewer inputs the respondent's answers on the laptop.

View a copy of the complete questionnaire.

The first stage of the interview is a series of classification and lifestyle questions. The next step is to determine which of some 280 publications the respondent has read. In order to do this as swiftly and efficiently as possible, publications are divided into groups of six. Respondents are shown a sequence of 50 screens, each of which contains the titles of 6 newspapers or magazines laid out in standard typeface. The order in which these screens is shown is split: in one half of interviews the sequence is (1) Daily Newspaper screens (2) Magazine screens (3) Sunday newspaper screens, and in the other half of interviews the order is reversed. The respondent is asked to say 'Yes' to those screens that contain one or more titles they have read or looked at for at least 2 minutes in the past 12 months, and 'No' to those screens that contain no such titles.

The interviewer then returns to the screens the respondent has positively identified, but this time showing the titles in their own style and typography (the 'mini-masthead'). The interviewer now works systematically through each of these selected screens asking for each of the 6 publications in turn whether the respondent has read it in the past 12 months.

The interviewer has now identified which publications respondents have read in the past 12 months, and these have been recorded by the DSCAPI program. The interviewer then returns to each of these titles in turn, this time showing one title at a time on the screen. The respondent is then asked for each title the recency question (when did you last read a copy of ...?) and the frequency question (how often do you read ...?)

Recency data are used to estimate Average Issue Readership (AIR). A respondent is classed as an average issue reader only if they have read a title within its publication interval. i.e. yesterday for a daily newspaper, within the last 7 days for a wekly newspaper or magazine, within the past four weeks for a monthly magazine etc. Frequency data are used to calculate reading probabilities for each title. These probabilities are used to estimate cumulative readership across a number of issues of a given title.

Average issue readers of all titles, newspapers and magazines, are asked the Source of Copy question (how they obtained the most recent issue they read), and the Time Spent Reading question (the time they usually spend reading an issue of the publication by the time they have finished with it). After this readership part of the interview has been completed the interviewer asks a series of questions about the respondent's use of other media: television, radio, cinema and the Internet.

The third section of the interview comprises further classification questions, in which the respondent is asked the age, sex, marital and occupational status of each member of the household, and in some detail their own occupation and, if they are not the Chief Income Earner in the household, the occupational details of the person who is. Occupational details are important, as they are used to determine the social grade of the individuals in the household, and social grade is a powerful discriminator in many areas of behaviour (for an explanation of Social Grade see Definitions of Social Grade).

The fourth and last section of the interview covers aspects of the respondent's lifestyle, including motoring, travel, possession of certain new products, their academic and other qualifications, investments and financial activity, and income.

The very last question asked is if the respondent would be willing to be interviewed on a market research survey again, should they be approached. In spite of the length of the interview, and the personal nature of some of the questions, some 70% of respondents say they would be willing to be interviewed again.