Anatomy of a Magazine Audience Estimate: The ARF Comparability Study Revisited

Valentine Appel

Comparison between the two methods of readership research used in the US: Through the Book (TTB) as used by SMRB, and Recent Reading (RR) as used by MRI.

Anatomy of a Magazine Audience Estimate: The ARF Comparability Study Revisited

Valentine Appel

BACKGROUND

Most magazine audience research in the United States uses either of two methods - one called Through the Book (TTB) and employed by the Simmons Market Research Bureau and the other called Recent Reading (RR) and employed by Mediamark Research Inc (MRI). More recently, the new Nielsen Home*Scan service has also adopted a variation of the RR method. Both the TTB and the RR methods involve a two-step procedure using probability samples of adults who are personally interviewed.

The first step screens a large number of...

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