1. Measuring Audience and Impact
Go round: who are you and what do you want from us?/ what experience do you have?
Why do research?
Helen Manchester, University of Manchester
Salvatore Scifo, University of Westminster
Salvatore Scifo - Identity and Location

2. Evaluating audience
What it is that you want to know? (adapted from J.Gordon, 2006)
Raw number of listeners
Proportion of radio listeners at any one time
What the listeners think
Which sections of the community like you most – by age, sex, social class or ethnicity
Which parts of your schedule are more or less popular
Why those who don’t listen to you choose not to
Measuring Audience and Impact

3. Some tips on Research Design (from CRT)
Evaluating audience
Some tips on Research Design (from CRT)
More questions you ask > more data you will have to analyse
> the longer it will take to conduct the survey
> the harder it will be to persuade public to participate
Be aware that the results of surveys changes by changing the wording of questions or even the order in which you ask them
Avoid recording general comments and use multiple choice options that enable you to extract those vital percentages.
Measuring Audience and Impact

4. Measuring Audience and Impact
Evaluating audience
A sample group of 1000 people (respondents) gives a fairly accurate picture of an audience
A larger group does not give much more precision
100 people is the minimum number for a survey
Difference is in degrees of accuracy
Measuring Audience and Impact

5. How to choose the sample group
Evaluating audience
How to choose the sample group
Sample of respondents potentially within your audience on:
 the High Street, Day Centre, Sports Club, Market Hall, etc. Over a short period (eg 2 days) 10 of the station volunteers approach 10 people each who they feel are probably within the station’s potential audience
Measuring Audience and Impact

6. How to conduct the survey
Evaluating audience
How to conduct the survey
Get permission from the site owner if necessary, a street is public place, a community centre is not
Insist that the respondents must be unknown to the volunteers doing the survey.
Keep the survey to a few simple questions
Measuring Audience and Impact

7. How to conduct the survey – 2
Evaluating audience
How to conduct the survey – 2
Approach the respondent and explain what you are doing
Check that the respondent is within the potential audience
Have they heard of the station?
Have they listened or viewed any of the output with the last week?
What did they hear or watch, prompt them by naming a couple of programmes and asking about content
Measuring Audience and Impact

8. Evaluating audience Using a sample of 100 makes the maths very simple:
43 out of the 100 is equal to 43%
To convert this percentage to actual numbers
> demographic breakdown of your area
These are the actual population figures that you can obtain from:
local authority website
local library
town hall
Measuring Audience and Impact

9. Measuring Audience and Impact
Impact Measurement
Work out what it is that you want to measure Eg (from Jallov)
is the radio station working effectively as an organism?
social gain?/ ‘soft outcomes’
capacity of the station to meet the needs and desires of the community?
OR Korbel: personal, community and mainstream agency benefits
Involving all communities, applying participatory, open and access-based principles?
Are the programmes considered good and effective locally
Social gain/ community development changes
Measuring Audience and Impact
Salvatore Scifo - Identity and Location

10. Impact Measurement How are you going to do it?
content and reception analysis
regular interviews/ sounding out the community audience
questionnaires for listeners who call in
analysis of letters/ s from listeners
individual in depth interviews/ testimonials from partners
focus groups with different 'community' groupings
reflective diaries/ audio diaries/ blogs
Choose the method to suit what you want to find out. Also got to be practical and sustainable!
So for eg if you want to find out whether ‘communities’ feel represented in the station you run some focus groups, if you want to find out about how the radio station is running you might encourage volunteers and other to start blogs/ audio diaries?
About audience: letters/ s
About developing a reflective culture, where evaluation/ reflection always seen as part of a process/ written in to all processes
Measuring Audience and Impact
Salvatore Scifo - Identity and Location

11. Measuring Audience and Impact
Impact Measurement
Participatory evaluation
Who? Community members, project staff etc
What? Identified by people
How? Self evaluation, simple methods attached to local culture, open, immediate hearing of results
When? more frequent, small scale evaluations
Why? to empower local people to initiate, control and take action
Taking reflective processes to logical level
Measuring Audience and Impact
Salvatore Scifo - Identity and Location

12. Impact Measurement A 'community mobilizer’
continued contact with the community
ensuring that all 'communities within a community' are represented
active community research
ongoing training of community programmers
Measuring Audience and Impact

13. Measuring Impact and Audience
Any questions?
‘Nugget Mining’ > we have to take a ‘Nugget of Knowledge’ to the final plenary: >> best idea for good practice from the session >> your own practice
Measuring Audience and Impact

14. Measuring Audience and Impact
Thank you!
 Helen Manchester Salvatore Scifo
Measuring Audience and Impact