Research

organizations
Christopher ONeill
Ciaran McElhinney

BARB (Broadcasters
Audience Research Board)

Barb is responsible for delivering the television Audience measurement system. The
research that barb does covers 5 questions.
1. Who is watching
2. what are they watching
3. When are they watching
4. What screen are they watching on (TV/ipad etc.)
5. How did the content get to the screen

Television is the only way of viewing media that is measured 24/7

They measure what people watch by selecting a barb panel of 5100 households with
over 12000 people living in these homes who represent what British people are
watching, they select these houses by interviewing thousands of people to pick the
right houses that need to be represented.

BARB are able to do establishment surveys that measure the change in how media is
viewed and what services are being used.

There are however some limitation with this way of measurement as BARB are unable
to find out what type of person is watching a certain show and how many people in the
household is watching a particular show.

http://www.barb.co.uk/resources/barb-facts/how-we-do-what-we-do?_s=4

Who is watching and

when

Meters installation

On your TV, Computer, laptop and phone

Hand set viewing device

They capture sounds which determines the program

there watching

They use sound instead of images because the sounds

is easy to identify

Barb needs confidentiality with the houses they are

monitoring so if the house members make it open that
they are part of BARBS research they will be removed
from the study, it also studies irregularities in a
households measurement.

http://www.barb.co.uk/resources/barb-facts/how-we-d
o-what-we-do?_s=
4

BARBs future plans

Project dovetail is a future project that

BARB plan on using in order to tackle
limitations that their current way of
measurement faces. It involves the
joining of 2 data sources, the
information from the 5100 houses as
well as device based data from web
servers which monitor how online TV is
being watched. This will led to robust
cross-platform measurement so that
our costumers know what's being
watched, by whom and on which
device.

http://www.barb.co.uk/project-dovetail?

RAJAR (Radio Joint

Audience Research)

RAJAR is the official body in charge of measuring radio

audiences in the UK

It is jointly owned by the BBC and the Radiocentre.

There is approximately 310 individual stations on the

survey

How RAJAR does research

Rajar has its own Research service

Data is collected using a seven day listening diary,

approximately 110,000 adults over the age of 15 are asked
it fill one out over the 50 weeks of the year. Diaries can
also be given to 2 children aged 10-14 years.

Each respondent is asked to sort through a set of cards

with the names of all the radio stations in the area and
invited to select all the stations which they might listen to
or hear in various situations.

The only time that measurement is stopped is during the

Christmas and new year holiday period.

http://www.rajar.co.uk/content.php?page=about_process

Fieldwork materials

Questionnaires

Station cards and Labels

The Diary

Note: All questionnaires and diaries are scanned in order

to process the date.

http://www.rajar.co.uk/content.php?page=
about_process_materials

Data processing and

publication

Once the date has been collected, weighting procedures are implemented
to ensure that the population estimate on which the stations audience is
based is representative of the entire TSAs population.

Pre-weights are applied to correct for disproportionate sampling at the

segment level. Ethnic Origin pre-weights are also applied to correct
imbalances in the achieved sample according to white and non-white
groups.

Final rim weights reflect demographic weighting to correct the profile of

the achieved sample in the total universe and each TSA in terms of sex,
age, social grade and household size.

The RAJAR frequency of reporting are monthly, quarterly, 6-mounthly and

yearly, with a different set of weights for each frequencies, it is also not
possible to compare quarterly results with monthly by dividing as they are
completely different sets of data.

The quarterly summary is released in public domain by RAJAR every

quarter, which gives the latest top-line results for both the BBC and
Commercial Radio Stations.

http://www.rajar.co.uk/content.php?page= about_process_processing

http://www.rajar.co.uk/content.php?page= about_process_publication

Abc (Audie Bureau of

Circulations)

ABC was founded on 14th October 1931 by the ISBA

(society of British advertisers. It was founded to provide a
independent audit and compliance services and to bring
the industry together to agree measurement and process
reporting standards that define what counts and determine
best practice.

ABCS board consists of representatives from advertisers,

media agencies, media owners and trade bodies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a51r9tsL-ow

http://abc.org.uk/About-us/What-we-do/

Research

ABCS team of experts verify data across a wide range of

media channels including print, online and events and look
to include new platforms as they emerge.

ABC takes a census based approach which means counting

every interaction rather than using a survey sample. This
allows them to provide granular detail across channels to
showcase performance and support the media buying
process.