Q: What is a Reader Behavior Score and how is it calculated?

Reader Behavior Scores (RBS) are a measurement of newspaper readership. They are based on how often people typically read the newspaper, how much time they spend and how completely they read. They are expressed as a single score on a scale of 1-7, with one indicating non-readership and seven indicating heavy reading. Understanding and Calculating Reader Behavior Scores provides complete instructions on how to calculate RBS.


Q. How should I compare my newspaper's RBS to the national averages?

First, look at your newspaper's RBS score and determine whether you are particularly high or low. This will give you a sense of the overall readership of the newspaper and how it compares to other markets. Although most of RBS's value is in its ability, if measured at regular intervals, to monitor changes within your own market, it can be helpful to see how your newspaper compares to others. The average for the industry is 3.66. In general, differences greater than .25 above or below that should be considered meaningful.



The chart titled "Distribution of RBS Scores" shows the distribution of the RBS scores for the 100 Impact markets. Across the x-axis, the RBS scores are listed in increments from lowest to highest. The data is broken into .12 to .13 increments, with the midpoint of each increment listed on the graph. The scale along the y-axis indicates the number of newspapers, and the height of each bar indicates the number of newspaper that fall into each RBS category.

For example, 17 newspapers had an RBS score around 3.75. Only one had an RBS in the 4.25 range. This chart may help you to get a better sense of where your newspaper falls in comparison to other newspapers.


Q: What about the other tables explaining the average time spent and completeness?

Each table on the following pages shows the component of RBS and how respondents in your market answered questions about:

• Days they read your newspaper during a typical week
• How much time they typically spent during the week and on Sundays/weekend
• How completely they read during the week and on Sundays/weekend

To get some perspective on your newspaper's results, the industry and circulation group averages on the last page may be helpful. For example, compare the proportion of people reading your newspaper more than 30 minutes per day with the averages in your circulation group. A difference of eight per cent or greater is meaningful.


Q: I'm looking at the industry averages for typical daily reading, which says that we see that 27.4% of respondents do not read their local daily newspaper on any day of the week. Then I look at the weekday time spent reading and weekend completeness of reading and see that 30.4% and 32.8% of people say that they don't read the newspaper. Why the discrepancy?

Don't be confused by this apparent discrepancy. Some can be accounted for by people who read the newspaper only on Sunday or only during the week — they will appear as non-readers in one set of time spent and completeness questions.

Other factors are question non-response and slight inconsistency in how respondents answered questions. These anomalies can't be avoided and aren't large enough to worry about. We compensate for these small inconsistencies in individual components by grouping scores together into the over-all Reader Behavior Score for the most reliable measure of readership.



For more information, contact:

Mary Nesbitt
Managing Director, Readership Institute
m-nesbitt@northwestern.edu
847-467-4285