CHAPTER 9
AUDIENCE SURVEYS
As journalists and public relations practitioners, we
must not only understand how to produce factual
statistical data for our own use, but we must also
understand the attempts of others to statistically analyze
various events, programs and activities. We, as pro-
fessional consumers of press, private and government
surveys and statistics, must have a deeper understanding
of numerical analysis than the average sailor.
Being a senior journalist and perhaps the CO’s only
public affairs resource, you must be able to understand
the information presented in graphs, surveys and the
statistical jargon that is often thrust on a command and
just as often used to beat or intimidate an activity into
some form of action. For example, such a case might
arise if a community group gathered statistics on the
increase of crime in its area because your base opened
up a back gate into its community.
On close examination of these statistics with an
accompanying graph showing a dramatic upswing of a
line graph, you see the data starts with the gate opening.
However, the gate opening also coincides with the
summer vacation period. You, understanding that
statistical data from a short period of time may have
many variables, look at past crime statistics from
previous years and see that at the beginning of every
summer vacation the area suffers a similar surge of
crime. This information would be very useful to a CO
planning to make a public apology for the problem and
expend money and talent to better police the new back
gate area.
Although this is a contrived scenario, the idea
should be clear. Not only are we JOs required to be
producers of statistical data through surveys, we must
also be intelligent consumers of the same.
PURPOSE OF SURVEYS
Learning Objective: Identify the purpose of and the
information generated by audience surveys.
A Navy station manager, newspaper editor or a
command PAO has to know what is happening now.
Your finding out what is happening at any given minute
in any given situation is impossible. As journalists, we
know it is often difficult to tell what has happened in a
simple car accident even days after the event. (Just look
at how many disagreements on what happened ends up
in court.). Nevertheless, your finding out useful
information that is not unsubstantiated “scuttlebutt” is
best accomplished by careful analysis of the facts on
hand. Often, locating these facts is accomplished
through survey research.
PROGRAM EFFECTIVENESS
By finding out how many people watch the nightly
local news program, the broadcast station manager
determines if it is being aired at the correct time. The
newspaper editor must know how well read a particular
section of the paper is if there are plans to reduce or
enlarge a section. The PAO in the introduction to this
chapter better know how creditable the recom-
mendations are to the CO. Wrong decisions are usually
based on wrong information input. Good information
that will give a true picture is compiled with care and by
using professional techniques.
Surveying for effectiveness is an integral part of
your public affairs process or your ongoing estimate
of product success. In the book Effective Public
Relations by Scott M. Cutlip, Allen H. Center and Glen
M. Broom, this process is broken down into the
following steps:
l
l
l
l
Defining the problem (research and fact finding)
Planning and programming (decision making)
Taking action and communicating
Evaluating the program (research of results)
These four steps clearly show you how important
information gathering is to any public affairs or media
effort.
SURVEY EXPECTATIONS
Doing research (surveys) in the mass com-
munication field is an inexact science. You can never say
with 100-percent assurance that one television
program is better liked than another. However, by
following established procedures, you will know how
well you are serving your total audience (the terms
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