the way we live now

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- 1 - The Way We Live Now Daily Life in the 21 st century Graeme Griffiths, TNS Media James Holden, BBC INTRODUCTION The BBC Daily Life study has been carried out every 5-10 years since the 1930’s. The objective has always been to understand the UK public’s time and media usage. As a public service provider it is essential that the BBC strive to understand the needs of its audiences, and the BBC Daily Life project has always played a key role in this. The basic principle of the study is to ask respondents to list, throughout the day, all the activities they do. This is accompanied by a general lifestyle questionnaire that helps to categorise and segment the respondents. The scale and scope of the BBC Daily Life study has always been ahead of its time and the 2002/3 wave was no exception. Pioneering a technology new to market research, this wave of the study has been groundbreaking in both methodology and findings. This paper will highlight the increasing importance in social, cultural and commercial environments of time budget data; looking closely at the detail of people’s lives. Prof. Kajsa Ellegård and Dr. Matthew Cooper (2003) 1 wrote: At a first glance, everyday life seems to be very simple and everybody has experiences from it, but when we try to investigate it from a scientific perspective, its complexity is overwhelming. There are enormous variations in interests and activity patterns among individuals, between households and socio-economic groups in the population. Therefore, and in spite of good intentions, traditional methods and means to visualize and analyse often lead to over- simplifications. With the BBC Daily Life study we believe we have achieved the right balance between complexity and usability. The BBC Daily Life study has at its disposal more than 15,000 diary days across a full year which equate to almost three quarters of a million separate time periods of data. This paper will demonstrate how the survey is already impacting on BBC strategy across a wide range of areas, showing the potential of time use data to shape and optimise business efficiency. Above all the BBC Daily Life study shows how research can be used to map the full range of available media onto people in context, as opposed to mapping people onto individual media. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BBC DAILY LIFE STUDY Although dating back some 70 years, the BBC Daily Life study was not the first time diaries had been used to investigate the lives of respondents. There are documented studies going back to the mid nineteenth century in the US. In the UK one of the earliest studies was conducted by The Fabian Society Women’s Group between 1909 – 1913 and was titled ‘Round About a Pound a Week’. The study investigated how “poor” women coped with raising families on minuscule wages and attempted to understand the challenges 1 Source: Complexity in daily life – a 3D-visualization showing activity patterns in their contexts

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Page 1: The Way We Live Now

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The Way We Live Now Daily Life in the 21st century

Graeme Griffiths, TNS Media James Holden, BBC

INTRODUCTION The BBC Daily Life study has been carried out every 5-10 years since the 1930’s. The objective has always been to understand the UK public’s time and media usage. As a public service provider it is essential that the BBC strive to understand the needs of its audiences, and the BBC Daily Life project has always played a key role in this. The basic principle of the study is to ask respondents to list, throughout the day, all the activities they do. This is accompanied by a general lifestyle questionnaire that helps to categorise and segment the respondents. The scale and scope of the BBC Daily Life study has always been ahead of its time and the 2002/3 wave was no exception. Pioneering a technology new to market research, this wave of the study has been groundbreaking in both methodology and findings. This paper will highlight the increasing importance in social, cultural and commercial environments of time budget data; looking closely at the detail of people’s lives. Prof. Kajsa Ellegård and Dr. Matthew Cooper (2003)1 wrote:

At a first glance, everyday life seems to be very simple and everybody has experiences from it, but when we try to investigate it from a scientific perspective, its complexity is overwhelming. There are enormous variations in interests and activity patterns among individuals, between households and socio-economic groups in the population. Therefore, and in spite of good intentions, traditional methods and means to visualize and analyse often lead to over-simplifications.

With the BBC Daily Life study we believe we have achieved the right balance between complexity and usability. The BBC Daily Life study has at its disposal more than 15,000 diary days across a full year which equate to almost three quarters of a million separate time periods of data. This paper will demonstrate how the survey is already impacting on BBC strategy across a wide range of areas, showing the potential of time use data to shape and optimise business efficiency. Above all the BBC Daily Life study shows how research can be used to map the full range of available media onto people in context, as opposed to mapping people onto individual media.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BBC DAILY LIFE STUDY Although dating back some 70 years, the BBC Daily Life study was not the first time diaries had been used to investigate the lives of respondents. There are documented studies going back to the mid nineteenth century in the US. In the UK one of the earliest studies was conducted by The Fabian Society Women’s Group between 1909 – 1913 and was titled ‘Round About a Pound a Week’. The study investigated how “poor” women coped with raising families on minuscule wages and attempted to understand the challenges

1 Source: Complexity in daily life – a 3D-visualization showing activity patterns in their contexts

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they faced; 39 women with children in Lambeth, London completed detailed activity and expenditure diaries with the aim of identifying the steps needed to be taken to eliminate poverty2. In the early days of the BBC Daily Life study TV was seen as a minority activity that was deemed unlikely to take over our lives to quite the extent it has. Newspaper articles about the study from 1952 are testimony to how TV was already beginning to change family life but The Daily Sketch dated 14 April 1952 claims that gardeners have yet to be tempted by the strange box in the middle of their living room:

Many people will watch television this afternoon and evening instead of going out. There will be few gardeners among them, however. A BBC inquiry into the changes TV makes in family life reveals that it is seldom allowed to come between a man and his flower-beds

Sunday Express 13 April 1952:

Fifty percent of all television set owners, …….., earn less than £8 a week. Seven out of 10 of the adults who spent most time viewing left school at the age of 15 or 16. “The greater the income or the higher the standard of education, the less time people spend watching TV. Given two families with differing levels of education but roughly the same amount of money coming in, the odds are that it will be the family whose educational standard is the lower which will acquire a TV set first. These facts reveal a swift social revolution – one that has taken only four years to accomplish – for as recently as the end of 1947 television was an entertainment still largely the privilege of the “better off.”

Over the course of its existence the BBC Daily Life study has weathered incredible advances in technology. When the first study took place the BBC was the only TV station available and there were just two radio stations operating. Now the BBC operates two terrestrial TV channels, six digital TV channels, five national analogue radio stations, 39 local analogue radio stations, five digital radio stations, (featuring such innovations as an internet radio player allowing ‘programmes on demand’) and a diverse website that is one of the top 10 most visited websites in Britain3. It was clear that a study designed to track the vast number of new activities available to people would have to be advanced enough to fit into this new technological age. The last BBC Daily Life study took place in 19954. In technological terms eight years is a long time. PC’s were in just 36% of homes (currently about 65%) and the internet was only slowly becoming accepted with the advent of Windows 95 and a crop of affordable modems. Penetration for mobile phones was sufficiently low as to not be covered in the survey; satellite TV was in 14% of homes; and digital TV was still three years away. With these factors in mind, the 1995 study was conducted using a day after aided recall approach, the BBC Daily Life survey has always been at the forefront of technology and following this tradition respondents were interviewed using one of the earliest versions of CAPI (Computer Aided Personal Interviewing). Given the complexity of everyday life in the 21st century this ‘day after’ methodology was deemed inadequate in meeting the needs of a modern Daily Life study. It was decided early on in the proposal stage that a radically different methodology would be needed for this wave of the study if it was to confidently capture all the intricacies of modern life. The plethora of new media devices combined with increased multitasking and pressures of time made the BBC sceptical as to the ability of respondents to recall, 24 hours after the event, the minutiae of day to day living in the 21st century.

2 Source: Institute for Social and Economic Research 3 Source: Nielsen//NetRatings 4 ‘Are we running out of time?’ presented at the 1996 MRS conference by Tony Wearn, BBC and Richard Asquith, TNS Media

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METHODOLOGY Initially the BBC had plans to use a paper diary allowing participants to record media usage and other events soon after they did them. However, we live in an era of falling response rates and over-researched respondents. A diary covering all possible activities on a single or double page could prove very daunting. Potentially, it could prove so daunting both in terms of complexity and routing as to make probable data quality questionable. Early on in the design of the study personal digital assistants (PDAs) were considered as an alternative to traditional paper diaries, this was primarily because PDA’s were;

• Portable – PDA’s are designed to be carried around making them ideal for completing a diary in ‘real time’.

• Modern – There is always a concern in most projects about how to reach younger men who tend to be the least likely to participate in research. The PDA had the potential to be the tool that attracts this hard to reach demographic.

• Programmable – the ability to route respondents through the diary was seen as a great advantage and would allow for more prompting and would streamline each time slot so the respondent would only need to see the screens applicable to them.

The project was piloted in early 2002 with a mixed methodology of 70% PDA diaries and 30% paper diaries. The pilot showed that this mixed methodology approach was justified. Although the PDA is a much more accurate method of data collection and has many advantages relating to routing and prompts, it was still important not to alienate those respondents who would either feel uncomfortable or nervous about using a PDA; these tended to be older respondents and those more fearful of technology in general. For this reason the final study did utilise paper diaries for a sub-group of the sample; primarily the over 55s. The specifications for the 2002/3 BBC Daily Life Study were briefly as follows:

• 5212 respondents aged 4+ completed and returned the diary. • Respondent were recruited using RDD (Random Digit Dialling). • Quotas were set for recruitment on age, gender, working status, general ethnic origin, country of

residence, level of technical ability and diary completion method. • Respondents were assigned either a paper or PDA diary based on their answers during the recruitment

questionnaire in relation to their technical ability. • Respondents were informed of the method of diary collection allocated by the CATI script at the end of

the interview and were given the opportunity to refuse at that point based on their diary allocation. • The study ran over four quarterly waves from October 2002 through September 2003. • The diary covered three days and was split into 48 half hour periods per day, 144 time slots in total per

respondent. • Respondent also received a 24 page diagnostic questionnaire. • Respondents received a £10 Boots gift voucher for a completed diary and questionnaire. • A maximum of one adult and one child could be recruited per household. • Diary completion method was split 70% PDA and 30% paper. • PDA diary respondents were provided with a 24hr freephone technical helpline to be used for any

questions relating to the operation of the PDA. Following allocation, diaries and questionnaires were sent to respondents. Due to the nature of the task respondents were asked to undertake it was felt that we should remain in contact throughout the process, not least to ensure the PDAs were being tracked. Once the respondent pack had been dispatched the respondent was called on the day prior to the commencement of their diary. This was a call designed to check that the pack had arrived safely and that the respondent was still able to complete the diary the following day. The second call, scheduled for the day following the final day of their diary, checked that the respondent had finished the diary and was planning to return it. There would then be a seven day delay; if the PDA diaries still had not been returned a third round of calls began to chase the whereabouts of the PDA.

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The PDA diary is explained in more detail below but the paper diary consisted of A4 sheets stitched along the short edge. The paper diary day was split into three eight hour sections each of which covered a double page. The diary layout was vertical with half hour time periods across the top of the page and questions and activities running down the side of the two pages.

CHILDREN This wave of the BBC Daily Life study also recruited and interviewed respondents from the age of four and there were two different types of questionnaire. Children aged four to nine received a reduced version of the diagnostics questionnaire and a slightly different diary. Children aged four to nine were only recruited in households where a 16+ respondent had already been recruited and where adult consent had been obtained. Children aged four to nine only received the paper version of the diary regardless of their technical ability. Respondents aged 10 to 15 were recruited following the collection of adult consent and were given either the PDA or paper diary depending on their technical ability. In terms of the diary and questionnaire content all respondents 10+ were treated in the same way

RESPONSE RATES At the recruitment stage the BBC was cited as sponsoring the study and this no doubt had a further positive effect on not only acceptance rates but also completion rates. Figure 1 shows the proportion of diaries dispatched that were returned with useable data. Figure 1 Completed ‘usable’ diaries as % of total diaries dispatched 57% When it is considered that the recent Office of National Statistics time use study achieved a net response rate of 45% it is clear that the PDA methodology had a beneficial effect on response rates. This was also reflected in the fact that 86% of PDAs dispatched were returned. Eighty six percent is an important statistic in terms of financial viability as this figure gives an idea of the low number of actual PDA’s lost during the study. Looking to the future, a similar study could expect to dispatch an individual PDA on over eight separate occasions before it is lost.

THE PDA It was quickly discovered that there were no off the shelf software packages capable of performing the functions on a PDA that a diary format necessitated. Most packages available at the time could not cope with the kind of complex routing that would be required. Consequently TNS wrote a diary script from scratch in NSBasic that could achieve the desired results. The end result was a user friendly package that, very importantly, looked easy to complete. The electronic diary design was inspired by three central requirements

• Respondent ease of use: It was essential that the diary looked easy to use. We planned to send diaries out to everyone bar the most non-technical so the diary needed to have a pleasant look and feel that was as easy to use as a normal cash point.

• The BBC’s specific data requirements: Historically the BBC Daily Life study has been aided recall, and time slots have been filled in for the previous day/s. For this wave it was felt that a real time data capture method would be more pertinent. The BBC also wanted to be able to prompt and route the respondent through various questions.

• Comparability with the accumulated industry knowledge: There have been numerous time use studies in the past5 and it was felt that comparability with these studies would be an important validation tool.

5 Source: http://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/mtus/technical.php#uk

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PDA Diary Screens The Diary began by asking the respondent where they were for the first half hour of their designated time period (Figure 2). From this point if the respondent is at home, in someone else’s home or somewhere else indoors then they are given the option of coding asleep. The screen shown in Figure 3 asks where the respondent was if they coded at home or in someone else’s home.

Figure 2 Figure 3

In figure 4 respondents are asked to code all the people they were with during that particular half hour period. After ascertaining the respondents whereabouts and who they were with the diary moves on to look at what the respondent was doing. Activities were split into primary and secondary activities. Respondents were actively encouraged to code more than one secondary activity by highlighting the importance in the instructions and by on screen prompts on the PDA. Figure 5 shows the screen used to code the main activity. To aid usability it was important to group all main activity headings on a single menu screen.

Figure 4 Figure 5

The activity list was carefully selected to cover as many different options as possible. A pre-coded list of activities was chosen over an open ended methodology because of the advantages in speed of data delivery. Past time use studies using a write-in activity list can take many months to code answers and the results of the study needed to be as concurrent as possible. The activities also closely represented the tasks common in the 21st century, tasks that would not have been included in previous studies. There was an obvious focus on media activities given the sponsor of the study but this was not to the detriment of other activities. Looking at early activity lists from other time use studies it is possible to see how different life is now.

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A 1935 study conducted in Boston, Massachusetts6 asked respondents to write down, in their own words, all activities lasting for more than five minutes over a four week period and thus contained activities that reflected the lifestyle of the time; e.g. The definition of radio included: ‘listen to radio and smoke’. Women’s indoor activities were listed as: ‘Cut out blouse, cut out patterns, darning, fancy needlework, fancy work, hand work, knitting, mend clothes, millinery, remodelled a dress, sewing, stamping designs for embroidery, weaving’. Hobbies included ‘collecting newspaper clippings’ and ‘took kittens for an airing’. The Boston study was large even by today’s standards and consisted of distributing 100,000 diaries but the response rate was low and only 5% (5000) were returned completed. Figure 6 shows the screen that follows a respondent pressing the ‘Entertainment (Sound and Vision)’ button. Following the questions relating to activity, respondents are asked about their ‘availability’ (Figure 7) to any media they have not used in that half hour. The notion of availability comes from asking the respondent whether they would have been able to do the activity if they had wanted to. The inclusion of this variable allows for analysis that, when coupled with actual activities, gives total potential audience to media across the day. The final question of both the paper and PDA diaries asked about the respondent’s mood. Figure 8 shows how weather icons were used to depict a four point mood scale. The information collected from this question was able to give a greater richness to the data by allowing a respondents mood to be tracked across a day in relation to the activity list. Figure 6 Figure 7 Figure 8

Comparison with the 2000 ONS time use study The ONS study seems the most logical of all the time use studies available to compare against as it is one of the most recent; it was conducted in a similar geographical area and a lot of the data is in the public domain. Figure 9 shows the comparison of three basic measures: sleeping, working/studying and travelling, between the ONS study and the BBC Daily Life Study. The charts show an average day and the average number of people engaged in each of the three activities in any given time period; e.g. at 8am 19% of the Daily Life sample are still asleep, 19% are either working or studying and 15% are travelling. It is clear that the general shape of the day is almost identical despite the differing methodologies and sample sizes.

6 Source: Pitirim A. Sorokin and Clarence Q. Berger. (1939) Time Budgets of Human Behaviour. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press/London: Humphrey Milford: 28-32; 91-2.

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Figure 9 ONS TIME USE 2000

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The ONS study found, not surprisingly, that people woke up earlier during the week than at weekends; 77% of adults were awake by 8am on a weekday and 69% by 9am on a weekend. The BBC Daily Life study found much the same with 80% of 16+ adults awake by 8am on a weekday and 69% by 9am on a weekend

FINDINGS – How the BBC has benefited from the data The level of detail in the BBC Daily Life database is vast and defies a simple ‘summary of main findings’. The results are a living database that informs BBC activity across many areas. In this section we will try to highlight some of the more interesting findings from the study as well as show some actual examples of areas how the study has been used to change things within the BBC. We have already compared the BBC Daily Life study to the recent Office for National Statistics7 study. The BBC has been working with the data since early 2003 and it was critical that the BBC got the maximum return on its use of licence fee payer’s money in funding the study, to ensure that the 2003 study was widely understood (via a series of pan-BBC road-show presentations), investigated, communicated and acted upon. The primary internal challenge the BBC Daily Life study has faced is that the sheer scale of the database provides a massive opportunity but can also be intimidating to casual research users. In conjunction with Telmar, considerable efforts were put into making the results database as user-friendly as possible whilst maintaining the exceptional variety of functionality necessary. By the time the final wave of data had been delivered the BBC Daily Life study had been fully integrated into the portfolio of research tools and data sources that the BBC regularly use to understand, target and profile their diverse audience, such as; BARB, RAJAR, TGI and the PanBBC tracking study. .

1. Maximising cut-through. Daily Life provides a level of texture that ratings data can’t, including an understanding of TV viewing as a main and a background activity. We’re watching more and more TV since its impact was first measured by the Daily Life study in 1952 – but more and more of this is wallpaper. Figure 10 shows average weekly TV consumption for 1950 vs. 1974 vs. 2002. 7 Source: 2000 Time Use Survey, Office for National Statistics (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/StatBase/Product.asp?vlnk=9326)

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Figure 10:

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The direct interaction between radio and television is vital to the BBC but direct comparisons tend to be limited as BARB and RAJAR use different measures and methodologies. The BBC Daily Life data allows us to look at that interaction and to look at the relationship in more detail as we are able to distinguish between primary and secondary activities. TV for instance is often perceived as a primary activity but this is not always the case. Radio is typically confirmed as a secondary activity, often but not exclusively on in the background. Figure 11 shows how, during the day, TV is used in an ambient way. It is only at 7pm when prime time starts that TV switches for the majority from a secondary activity to the main focus of attention, before this point TV is on but is not the focus of attention for many.

Figure 11

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Base: 15+ Respondent days (13,227) We did find that there is a clear point in the day when television usage overtakes radio as the main media activity. Figure 12 shows that this crossover point falls in the mid to late afternoon. We can also see that, not surprisingly, TV dominates media usage for the rest of the day through until about 2am when radio takes precedence once more.

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Figure 12

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Base: 15+ Respondent days (13,227) Not only can the data give us insight into the relationship between TV and radio but also we are able to investigate the audience for both in terms of actual audience and also potential audience. If a respondent said they were not watching or listening then they were asked if they could have watched or listened, given that there was a TV or radio available to them. We can also look at what activities those available to any platform were actually doing. These measures allows the tracking of a total potential audience above and beyond those participating in the activity, again vital information for identifying new schedule opportunities, setting realistic opportunities and giving potential to grow audience as opposed to just increasing share of existing audience. Daily Life enables us to pinpoint the times when key audiences are most likely to be paying attention to the TV or radio and what else they are doing at the same time, providing schedulers and media planners with crucial intelligence. Ø In the Nations, researchers have used the Daily Life data to assist in developing a new weekend

schedule for BBC Radio Ulster and it has been used to understand household behaviour in the 6-7pm slot in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Ø on Saturday nights, TV is more likely to be a focused activity from 19:30 and we saw an ‘Eastenders

effect’ whereby, on weekdays, young ethnic audiences are most likely to be focusing on TV at 19:30-20:00

2. Managing expectations Daily Life goes beyond ratings data to measure the availability of audiences to use media, helping us to set realistic reach objectives at specific times of day. Ø Within BBC News, the data has been used to look into the environment within which the main news

bulletins appear. For example, the data has been used to better understand what people are doing while they watch the early evening national and regional news, leading to improved signposting within the programme and more appropriate on-air trails for the slot.

Ø BBC Three have used the findings to better understand the needs of their target audience. On an

average weekday evening, more are out of the home than watching TV at every time slot apart from 18:30-19:00. (But those who are watching TV are mostly paying attention unlike other age groups.)

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3. Making sense of the proliferation of media platforms in people’s homes Daily Life shows us how media platforms are distributed throughout the home, and when (and by whom) they are used. In the main, media consumption patterns remain traditional and dominated by TV and radio. However, younger audiences are clearly exhibiting some very different behaviour: Ø Information has been used strategically to better understand the changing digital landscape in which

the BBC operates. Single source multiple platform data, coupled with household technology ownership and attitudinal data all found within one survey has proved invaluable in more accurately understanding current and likely future consumer needs and behaviour

Ø Sixty per cent of boys aged 6-12 use games consoles on weekdays – three times as many as use the

internet. Ø An incredible 95% of teenage boys have a games console at home and half spend over nine hours a

week playing on them. While kids are gathering an increasing amount of hardware in their bedrooms, this does not yet represent new targeting opportunities on a large scale. The vast majority of kids’ bedrooms do not have digital TV (DTV), digital radios or internet, and consumption of multiple media at any one time is the exception rather than the norm.

4. Understanding household dynamics Daily Life offers unique insights into the time, space and people factors which affect the way media is used. Generally, audiences remain in the living room even when someone else is making the viewing decisions, but for many kids, there is a migration to the bedroom later on. There is little instance of parents moving into bedrooms etc for early and mid evening viewing Figure 13 plots a typical pattern in family homes: (based on father, working full-time, with one or more kids of school age or below, Monday – Friday.) When does the family come together to watch TV and at what times do kids and parents ‘own’ the TV space? Figure 13

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Ø In relation to children, the data has had wide-ranging benefits for CBBC. The study has been used to understand the routine of parents with pre-school children including looking at times when they utilise media with their children present. This is helping with the planning of communicational messages about CBeebies.

Ø The data has also been used to establish a Sunday morning routine amongst older children to help aid

the programme content of TV magazine shows. Ø 20:00 is a key junction, as kids start to move to their bedrooms, and parents start to focus on the TV.

Kids play an important role in TV viewing choices before 20:00

5. Key time slots For any given time slot, Daily Life allows us to paint a detailed picture of available audiences: who is available to view or listen at that time, who are they with, what else are they doing, what have they just done and what will they do next? These detailed pictures can inform scheduling decisions, help us empathise with and reflect our audiences in our output. Ø Within BBC Radio the data has been used to inform Radio 1 presenters Sara Cox and Chris Moyles on

their new breakfast and drive time slots to understand the lifestyle of their audience and the context in which they are broadcasting – what are listeners doing whilst the shows are on? Thus bringing the BBC and its audience closer together by ‘tuning in’ broadcasts to audiences ‘daily lives’

Daily Life data is being combined with BARB, Rajar and internet ratings data as well as qualitative analysis to provide a comprehensive understanding of audiences at key times of the day.

6. Differences in behaviour The Daily Life sample is boosted to allow a robust analysis of national, regional and ethnic audiences, enabling us to identify key differences in behaviour. Equally, Daily Life can examine the behaviour of a wide range of bespoke audience groups from Freeview owners, regular night-clubbers to rugby union enthusiasts or gardening fans. Ø Around the UK, Daily Life data has been used to look at gardening activity and gardening enthusiasts

availability in relation to looking at the opportunity for a possible gardening slot on BBC local radio stations across the week.

Ø People in Northern Ireland get up later than the UK as a whole on weekdays: whilst those residing in the North East spend more time in the pub and go clubbing more than any region of the UK, although the Welsh are a close second.

7. Relationship with other media and communications devices Daily Life shows how use of new media fits around traditional media consumption and key stages of the day. While new media use does not occupy large chunks of people’s time, relative to other media, Daily Life can show when it is more likely to be used, what else is done at the same time, and whether those different new media platforms (e.g. narrowband vs. broadband internet) exhibit different behaviour. The BBC is a tri-media (TV, radio, internet) organisation so there has been a focus on those platforms here as a result of content length constraints, but the diary covered a full range of media activities as well as other activities all half hour by half hour. Amongst other things, the diary tracked various additional media communications activities such as: Ø Watching a DVD Ø PC games Ø Using the Internet including via Broadband

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Ø Other PC Usage Ø Games Console use Ø Video watching (both rented and taped from TV) Along with these measures mobile phone usage was also tracked in terms of not only actual calls but also in relation to ‘texting’ and using the phone to access the internet/WAP - 10-24s are the only age group whose primary mobile activity throughout the day is texting. Ø This enabled clear peaks in usage to be identified and this kind of information has had many uses

within the BBC especially for text based voting scenarios such as Fame Academy. Ø Nearly two thirds of those with broadband at home use the net on an average day, compared to just

four in ten of those with narrowband at home. Broadband users also spend twice as long online as those with narrowband.

Daily Life data confirms the evolution vs. revolution hypothesis: In the main, TV and radio continue to dominate people’s lives, but there are clear signs of revolution – among the young and among early adopters of new media technology: Equally, as Figure 14 shows, older youth (i.e. 15-24s) behave very differently to their younger counterparts: (In figure 14 iTV refers to Interactive TV) Figure 14

15-24s are more likely than 10-14s to go online on the average day, and less likely to play on games consoles. They are more likely to use mobile internet services. (e.g. WAP) In terms of time, they spend twice as long online as 10-14s.

8. Mood At the end of each half hour period the respondent was asked to code their mood using a four point scale represented by weather icons8. This measure provided some interesting findings, the main being that people are generally reluctant to use the bottom ‘stormy’ box – we seem to generally be a fairly contented,

8 See Figure 8

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“mustn’t grumble”, nation. On the one to four scale9 very few respondents chose the two unhappy scores (represented by cloudy symbols). The lowest average mood score was seen during the 4am-4:30am time slot. There is a slight gender variation in mood across the day as Figure 15 shows. In general women are slightly more likely to code happier moods through the day with the exception of night-time and especially around 4am when those women awake (some due to small children!) code some of the lowest mood scores seen. In terms of age we see clear differences especially among the 15-24 year olds who often live up to the label of moody teenagers.

Figure 15

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Base: 4+ respondent days Conclusion New insights continue to emerge from Daily Life on an almost daily basis but the BBC is not the only one making use of this valuable tool. JCDecaux the outdoor advertising specialists joined the study in the third wave and added some questions of their own to the self completion questionnaire. Daily Life is already bringing the BBC closer to its audiences. It is a genuinely groundbreaking study that offers genuinely new, actionable insight into the way people live their lives in the 21st century and will form a key plank of the BBC’s understanding of its audiences in the run up to Charter review. It is clear from the advances in technology over the eight years preceding this wave of the study that the BBC cannot wait another eight years before embarking on the next wave especially considering the extent to which the study has integrated itself into the tool kit of researchers at both the BBC and JCDecaux. The study has successfully pioneered a totally new methodology to the research industry that should be built on in our quest to better understand the behaviours and motivations of those who we interact with on a daily basis.

9 Unhappy was coded as one and happy as four