Makeup/Layout Research

Uses and Gratifications Studies. A uses and
gratifications study is used to study media
content. For newspapers, it can determine the
motives that lead to newspaper reading and
the personal and psychological rewards that
result from it. The methodology of the uses
and gratifications study is straightforward:
Respondents are given a list of possible uses
and gratifications and are asked whether any
of these are the motives behind their reading.
The technique can be applied for both print
and online versions. For example, a reader
might be presented with this question:
Here is a list of some things people have
said about why they read the newspaper.
How much do you agree or disagree with
each statement?
1. I read the newspaper because it is
entertaining.
2. I read the newspaper because I want
to kill time.
3. I read the newspaper to keep up to
date with what’s going on around me.
4. I read the newspaper to relax and to
relieve tension.
5. I read the newspaper so that I can
find out what other people are saying
about things that are important
to me.
The responses are then summed and an
average score for each motivation item is
calculated.
A Readership Institute’s survey attempted
to generate a list of common motivations for 

The readership of
items or categories is then related to certain
audience demographics or psychographic
characteristics. For example, Gersh (1990)
reported that teenage readers have reading
habits different from adults. The most popular
sections of the newspaper among teens
were comics, sports, and entertainment; finance,
food, and home sections were the
least popular. Stone and Boudreau (1995)
compared data from a 1985 survey of newspaper
reader preferences with data gathered
in 1994. They found that content preferences
changed remarkably little during the
time period. An industry study of item readership
(Astor, 2000) found that local news
was the number one category of news preferred
by readers. Fashion news ranked last.
More recently the Newspaper Association
of America (2003) reported that the most
popular parts of the newspaper were main
news, followed by local news, entertainment,
and sports. A 2004 survey of readership of
special sections of the newspaper found that
the business/finance section ranked first,
followed by classified ads and the comics
(“Who’s Reading What?” 2004).
Measuring the readership for a specific
item on a newspaper or magazine website
is a little more complicated. One problem
has to do with the time frame. In the traditional
print media, item readership is usually
based on the reading of one day’s copy of a
newspaper or a weekly or monthly issue of
a magazine. However, on the Internet, items
may stay posted for varying lengths of time.
As a result, item readership could be based
on daily, weekly, or even monthly reading.
Rather than looking at the readership of
specific content items, research about online
newspaper and magazine readership tracks
the popularity of certain website arrangements
and story presentations. One method
involves the use of an eye camera—a device
that can track how a person’s gaze travels
over an image. For example, research at the