USE OF A RECALL CRITERION IN MEASURING THE EDUCATIONAL TELEVISION AUDIENCE

In: Public opinion quarterly: journal of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, Band 26, Heft 1, S. 114-121

Abstract

Studying the extent of involvement in prestigeful activities poses a problem in survey res. Involvement is often measured by asking R's to make self-estimates of their involvement, a procedure that may lead to over-statements due to prestige bias. In a study of adult evening viewing of educ'al TV, the authors attempted to minimize the possibility of prestige bias by imposing a program-recall criterion on involvement indices. An area probability sample of 3,780 telephone households was drawn from Minneapolis, St. Paul, & their contiguous suburbs. Telephone households located within the sample areas drawn were listed from a street-address telephone directory; sample households were drawn randomly from the list. During the telephone interviews, an essentially random procedure was used to select an adult R from all adults living within each household. Net sample size was 3,157 (83.5% completion). 2 of the traditional measures of audience size-R's own estimates of recentness & f of viewing-were used. But, in addition, a program-recall criterion was used. After the self-estimates were obtained, an open-ended question was used to ask R's to recall a recent program they had viewed on educ'al TV. Interviewers then probed, asking for the name of the program, the name of someone who appeared on the program, or a description of the program's content. To show the effect of requiring program recall, one set of percentages was computed for all persons who claimed recent or frequent viewing; another set of percentages was computed for R's who satisfied the program-recall criterion in addition to offering testimony of recent or frequent viewing. It appeared that some prestige effect will be found when interviewing people about educ'al TV. When the recall criterion was not used, the size of audience statistic (eg, percentage of persons who had viewed during the past 7 days) was about 20% higher. The discrepancy looks small when audience-size percentages are small, but increases when viewing is less recent because recall becomes more difficult. The authors recommend using the program-recall criterion because such a statistic measures demonstrated effect (eg, the effective audience) & assures a minimum of prestige bias in the measure. The authors also found that f -of-viewing estimates indicate a higher level of viewing than the recentnessof -viewing estimates. They present a viewing typology based upon a combination of f , recentness, & program-recall measures. AA.