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The CRE Re-Affirms Difficulty of Measuring Media Usage in the Workplace

No Impact on Video Consumer Mapping Study Findings

NEW YORK, NY – March 26, 2009 – The Council for Research Excellence’s Media Consumption and Engagement Committee has been conducting an ongoing review of data gathered in the Video Consumer Mapping Study (VCM) to maximize our learning from this groundbreaking study.

Due to limited employer cooperation, measuring media usage in the workplace has traditionally been difficult to accomplish. Even the well-regarded observational method can only be as effective as the cooperation rates of the observed and their employers.

Deeper analysis of the VCM database did indeed reveal some under-representation of at-work observations.

Total adult 18+ working days accounted for 34.2% of all observed days (weekdays + weekends). This compares to the American Time Use Survey, which estimates working days at 44.7%.

Combining this 10.5 percentage point difference with the portion of the average day spent working, resulted in minimal impact in the VCM’s reported daily time spent with media data (ranging from -17 minutes for Live TV to +9 minutes for Web + Email).

# of Minutes of Daily Media Usage

*Web-Only is included in Web+Email, so does not contribute to the total time spent.

Source: Council for Research Excellence, Ball State, Sequent Partners

In line with the Council for Research Excellence’s mission to “advance the knowledge and practice of methodological research on audience measurement,” we have uncovered important new insights that will help refine the observational methodology, and better enable the industry to more fully incorporate at-work media usage going forward.

Released November 2009, for more information, please visit www.researchexcellence.com

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