This is a new book by Dennis List, founder of Audience Dialogue - to be published by Original Books, New Zealand, late in 2000. It's written specially for media people in developing countries - as well as small or nonprofit organizations anywhere in the world. It's written in fairly simple English, for readers whose first language is not English.

Near-final drafts of the first chapters are now here on this web site. If you feel like making any comments, criticisms, or suggestions, or there's a part you don't understand, please email us at kya@audiencedialogue.org. We welcome your comments.

CONTENTS

Drafts of most chapters are now available, but (as you'll find) some sections are not completed. If you see the # symbol, it means that something still has to be inserted.

Chapter 1: Planning
Types of audience research. How research is done: an overview. Planning a research project. Some findings about audiences.

Chapter 2: Sampling [big: 117K]
Populations. Sampling frames. Samples. Principles of random sampling. Choosing a sample size. Selecting starting points for surveys. Cluster samples in door-to-door surveys. Selecting respondents within households.

Chapter 3: Questionnaires
Planning the questionnaire. Types of question. Question wording. How to write a questionnaire. Program testing. Questionnaire layout. Testing questionnaires.

Chapter 4: Interviewing
Choosing the place of interview. Finding interviewers. Training interviewers. Finding people at home. Identifying the right respondent. Introductions. Interviewing techniques. Finishing an interview. Verifying interviews. Paperwork for interviewers.

Chapter 5: Analysis
Initial processing. Coding. Manual processing. Computer processing. Preliminary analysis. Evaluating the results.

Chapter 6: Reporting
The report's audience. What form a report should take (written, spoken, etc). Suggested layout. Using graphs. Include recommendations?

Chapter 7: Phone surveys
Sampling. From directories. Random digit dialling. Introductions. Refusal conversion. Call logs.

Chapter 8: Mail surveys
Making it easy. Questionnaire design. Followups. Receiving completed questionnaires. Fax surveys.

Chapter 9: Event surveys
Performance events. Continuing events.

Chapter 10: Informal interviewing
Also known as semi-structured interviewing, or in-depth interviewing.

Chapter 11: Qualitative research
Mainly about how to do consensus groups.

Chapter 12: Monitoring and response techniques

Chapter 13: Observation

Chapter 14: DIscovery conferences
A new method we've developed: a hybrid between research and planning.

Chapter 15: Internet audience research

There will also be several appendixes of useful reference information. These will include

• A "question library" of several hundred questions commonly asked in audience research, with tested and recommended wordings.
• Glossary of audience research terms.
• Further reading: both on paper and on the internet.
• Questions often asked by respondents, and answers that interviewers can give to these.
• Examples of forms that can be used in research work.