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How
are radio audiences measured?
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| The front of
a RAJAR diary. |
A
RAJAR diary is A5-sized, with around 50 pages. There are two pages for
each day of the week, with the time in 15 and 30 minute periods down the
side.
There
are also some tick-box questions at the front, relating to the respondent's
general radio usage, use of the internet, cinema and newspapers, and television
viewing. These are very useful for monitoring more general trends of media
consumption.
 A
card fold lifts up from the front cover when opened, and the respondent
is asked to choose from some accompanying stickers which radio stations
he or she has heard in the last year or so.
These stickers are then put on the card fold (see left), which is then
visible over each of the days' grids. All of the national stations and
the local services available in the area are included.
 The
respondent is asked to draw a line downwards through the boxes from when
they start listening to a station until they stop. An 'X' is then added
at the start of the line and another 'X' at the end, to make the listening
period clearer. So in the example on the right, the line shows that the
respondent was listening to Â鶹Éç WM on a Monday evening between 4.30 and
6.15 PM.
This line
would then mean that:
- The respondent
would be counted as having been listening to Â鶹Éç WM at these times
- The respondent
would be counted in Â鶹Éç WM's weekly reach
- The time
spent listening here would count towards Â鶹Éç WM's share of listening
to all radio.
The
diaries are collected and processed, and then every three months a quarterly
set of audience figures for each station is released. Where a station
is local rather than national, it is able to find out how it has done
in its particular transmission area, rather than being lost in the national
figures.
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