Readability Research

Readership Research
Many readership studies were done in the
United States in the years immediately preceding
and following World War II. The George
Gallup organization was a pioneer in developing
the methodology of these studies—namely,
a personal interview in which respondents
were shown a copy of a newspaper and
asked to identify the articles they had read.
The American Newspaper Publishers Association
(ANPA) undertook a comprehensive
study of newspaper readership. The ANPA’s
Continuing Studies of Newspapers involved
more than 50,000 interviews with readers
of 130 daily newspapers between 1939 and
1950 (Swanson, 1955).
Readership research became important
to management during the 1960s and 1970s,
as circulation rates in metropolitan areas began
to level off or decline. Concerned with
holding the interest of their readers, editors
and publishers began to depend on surveys
for the detailed audience information they
needed to shape the content of a publication.
The uncertain economy at the end of
the first decade of the new century and the
increasing competition from online media
have made readership research even more
important today. This is most evident in the
Readership Institute’s continuing Impact
Study, mentioned previously. Research into
newspaper readership is composed primarily
of four types of studies: reader profiles,
item-selection studies, uses and gratifications
studies, and journalist–reader comparisons.

 

Wimmer and Dominik Book Page 335-360