Release of blended NRS/AMP data: summary of changes to the data available to users

Introduction

AMP fieldwork commenced with effect from January 2017 and the last release of full NRS data (January-December 2016) will be at end of February 2017. The next three data releases after that will report blended NRS and AMP data.

In these blended data releaseskey readership measures and most of the standard classification data will be available as usual. However, there will be a reduced set of other data:

  • NRS questions not on AMP will no longer be published (e.g. some marketing and lifestyle questions)
  • New AMP questions will not be included (e.g. new engagement measures).

If questions are the same on NRS and AMP, data will be blendedand published. Where there are differences in questions the PAMCo Technical Group have agreed the best way for those differences to be reconciled so that data can continue to be published in the three blended data releases. Such questions will be presented using the NRS question wording and structure of data.

The first full release of AMP data will be in Spring 2018, at which point data for all the AMP questions, including many questions which are not on NRS, will be available for analysis.

This document summarises:

  • NRS questions which will no longer be available with effect from the April 2016-March 2017 release
  • Data which will be published in the blended data releases where there are differences between the NRS and AMP questions.

Questions which will not be published in the blended data releases

The following data will cease to be published with effect from the April 2016-March 2017 release:

  • Motoring
  • All existing NRS questions
  • Holidays and Travel
  • All existing NRS questions
  • Finance questions
  • All existing NRS questions
  • Main Shopper
  • Amount personally spent on food, drink & groceries
  • Direct Response
  • Items and service bought as a result of seeing an advertisement in a newspaper or magazine
  • Household tenure
  • No telephone that is not a mobile phone
  • Topics of Interest
  • Education
  • Future Plans
  • Household data will cease to be published but participant data will continue to be published
  • Children in household
  • Questions to establish the presence of children in the household is different in AMP questionnaire and therefore data for this will not be published during blended data but will be published in the new AMP dataset in February 2018
  • Internet (N.B. AMP will introduce many new internet questions in February 2018 to replace the NRS questions below which will no longer be available)
  • Frequency access the internet
  • Where accessed the internet in last 12 months
  • Devices used to access the internet in last 12 months
  • When last accessed the internet
  • Ever use Internet at home for work purposes
  • How accessed the internet at home in last month
  • Number of PCs/laptops have in home with access to the internet
  • Purchased any products or services via the internet in last 4 weeks
  • Radio
  • Days a week any station with advertising listened to
  • Time spent listening on an average day when listening to radio
  • Source of copy for print
  • Ways in which the copy is obtained e.g. Bought at newsagent or shop, Picked up on bus, train or tube, etc. (N.B. Summaries of primary and secondary readership will continue to be published along with the following response codes: I obtained it myself, someone in my household obtained it, someone in another household obtained it, saw work or office copy, and saw copy elsewhere.)

Questions which will be published in the blended data releases where there are differences between the NRS and AMP questions

  • Topic interest
  • A small number of topics have similar but different labels in NRS and AMP e.g. ‘Motor racing’ in NRS is prompted as ‘Motor sports’ in AMP. Data will be merged and published using the NRS label
  • Future plans
  • Any options differently labelled will use the NRS wording e.g. ‘Spend £1,000 or more on home improvements or furnishings’ in AMP will appear with the NRS data labelled ‘Spend £500 or more on building, decorating or home improvements’
  • Internet access
  • Blended data will be used to arrive at estimate of Internet use in the last 12 months
  • Daily newspaper 6-day readership
  • In NRS, daily newspaper recency and frequency questions are asked for the paper as a whole, including the ‘when last read’ question which generates the average issue readership(AIR) estimate. These questions are also asked specifically for the Saturday edition. 5-day Monday-FridayAIR is then modelled, and, in conjunction with the direct Saturday AIR measure, used to create a 6-day AIR measure. AMP asks about readership of the Monday-Friday newspaper directly, so it is no longer necessary to model 5-day AIR. 6-day recency and frequency data in the AMP dataset will be created from 5/6ths of the Monday-Friday claims and 1/6th of the Saturday claims
  • Newspaper recency codes
  • Response options are identical between NRS and AMP apart from the option after ‘past 3 months’ which is ‘longer ago’ on NRS and ‘past 4-12 months’ on AMP. ‘Longer ago’ is used as the label for the blended data
  • Newspaper supplements readership
  • There is no separate RPY question in the AMP questionnaire, as there is for NRS
  • Frequency of reading
  • The AMP interview uses different terminology and definitions to NRS and, unlike NRS, adapts the scales used to the different types of publication. The frequency of reading data will be blended and published with the NRS headings, with data from the ‘Occasionally’ and the ‘Less often’ codes in the AMP merged into the ‘Only Occasionally’ NRS category.
  • Ethnicity
  • AMP has 19 options compared to 12 options on the NRS, so some AMP codes will be combined to match the NRS codes