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Preference for newspaper size
Applied Ergonomics 45 (2014) 571e576
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Applied Ergonomics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apergo
Preference for newspaper size Steve N.H. Tsang, Errol R. Hoffmann*, Alan H.S. Chan Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 13 March 2013 Accepted 31 July 2013
The past few years has seen a change in the size of newspapers, with publishers moving to a smaller size format. Five ‘standard’ newspaper sizes are used in different countries: Broadsheet, Rhensch, Tabloid, Tall Tabloid and Berliner. These papers vary in both width and height of pages and hence there are implications for human reading comfort, which may be dependent on reading location such as on a lounge chair or on a train. Experiments were carried out to determine preferences for the different sizes and to relate these preferences to the geometric characteristics of the newspapers. For both comfortable and cramped/uncomfortable reading conditions, the rank order of preference for paper types was, from least to most-preferred, Broadsheet, Rhensch, Berliner, Tall Tabloid and Tabloid. Preferences were much stronger when determined in cramped/uncomfortable reading conditions, where most comparisons were significantly different. There was good correlation between participant ratings on several scales and preference, where most factors were related to comfort of holding and controlling the paper. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd and The Ergonomics Society. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Reading comfort Newspaper size Scaling
1. Introduction Many newspapers are currently changing from large format (Broadsheet) to a smaller format (Tabloid or Berliner). In the UK, this has already taken place with the London Times, The Independent (both to Tabloid) and the Guardian to the Berliner format. The Broadsheet is the largest format and has generally been associated with ‘quality’ newspapers. The Tabloid format is also known as a ‘Compact’ format by former Broadsheet newspapers in order to avoid the stigma associated with tabloid journalism (Rowe, 2011). The change to smaller formats is also happening in other countries. For example, the two major Australian broadsheet quality newspapers, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age, changed to the Compact format in March 2013. Their weekend papers are, however, still produced in the Broadsheet format. This change in weekday format occurred even though a survey of 14,000 readers voted 47% to retain the Broadsheet format, while 29% voted for the Tabloid and 10% for the Berliner format (SMH, 2012). However, in their first issue with the compact format (3rd March 2013), it is described how “100 readers were asked to read both broadsheet and compact versions of the newspapers in real-life conditions for 10 min while wearing specialised head caps”.
* Corresponding author. PO Box 89, Halls Gap, Victoria 3381, Australia. Tel.: þ61 613 53564529. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] (E.R. Hoffmann).
These head caps had 80 electrodes that “pick up on subtle measures of brain activity which indicated levels of engagement, emotional intensity and memory encoding, or what is committed to memory. Combined with eye-tracking technology . the neurological testing revealed how engaged readers were with the papers. The compacts were found to be more engaging than the broadsheets (page 20). Similar changes from large to smaller formats are happening in other parts of the world; in Switzerland the Blick has changed from Broadsheet to Tabloid (Stone, 2012); in Germany there is a compact version of Die Welt (Welt Kompakti). A review of the changes that are occurring in the newspaper industry is given in the proceedings of “The Future of Newspapers Conference” (2007). Newspapers that are produced in two size versions have in recent years found reader preference for the smaller format, with increasing sales of the Tabloid format compared with the Broadsheet format. This has occurred with the Irish Times (Slattery, 2012). Similarly, The Times of London offered readers both Tabloid (Compact) and Broadsheet formats for nearly a year, with the only difference lying in their sizes. It was found that most readers opted for the Tabloid format because of its convenience in size (News Corporation, 2005). Considering all newspapers in the UK, the average daily circulations of the tabloid newspapers are much higher than that of the broadsheet papers (Newspaper Marketing Agency, 2013). Reasons for publishers making the change of format are not always clear: Smaller formats give more convenient handling of the paper and are more popular with the younger population of readers, are several reasons that have been given. Holmqvist and
0003-6870/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd and The Ergonomics Society. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2013.07.015
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S.N.H. Tsang et al. / Applied Ergonomics 45 (2014) 571e576
each format, the articles were identical, although they were distributed in a different manner. In order to eliminate any effects of different weights of paper, the smaller formats had more pages so that the overall weight of the papers was close to constant. A sample newspaper is shown in Fig. 1 in the Rhensch format. The newspapers were produced with both Chinese and English articles to allow a larger range of participants. The newspaper name ‘Festival Daily’ arises from the location of City University near the Festival Walk shopping centre.
Constanze (2005) found that Tabloid format made more efficient use of paper than Broadsheet format did, as the time readers spent per square centimetre was 47% higher for tabloid spreads. Downsides appear to be the shorter article lengths and the decrease in size for advertising. It is this latter that is of concern to publishers as advertisement sizes are decreased and hence income to the newspaper may be reduced. Besides, it was reported that the bigger the size of the advertisement the better the readers see, like and remember it (Lundqvist and Holmqvist, 2001). Sales of the newspaper may also be affected and opinions seem to be divided on the effects of size change as, in some cases, there have been increased sales with the smaller format, while others have reported decreased sales (Stone, 2012; Slattery, 2012; Future of Newspapers Conference, 2007). There does not appear to be any published information on human preferences for newspaper size, although it is likely that there is in-house research (as noted above for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age) made when a change of format is considered. The reader survey published in the Sydney Morning Herald is far from scientific (as stated in the newspaper) as it is a vote of readers that was carried out on-line. Thus the aim of the present research was to attempt to determine if there are differences in the preferences in newspaper size of a reader population and attempt to correlate the preferences with the geometric size of the newspapers.
Two separate groups of participants were tested; 143 in a comfortable environment (no interference from adjacent persons) and 140 in cramped environments where there was the possibility of interference due to adjacent persons. If participants were to avoid interference, cramped postures and discomfort in the reading environment resulted. Of the 143 participants in the comfortable environment, 77 were male and 66 female. Ages in this group ranged from 22 to 52, with a median of 29 years. The cramped group consisted of 98 males and 42 females with ages ranging from 20 to35, with a median of 22.5 years. Age and gender were not of specific interest in this study and hence participants were selected on the basis of their willingness to take part in the experiment.
2. Method
2.3. Testing locations
Newspapers are read in a number of different environments, which may affect the preference for a particular size. For example, reading a Broadsheet while sitting in a cramped or crowded environment such a train or café may be quite difficult in terms of holding the paper to a comfortable reading distance, turning the pages and avoiding interference with adjacent persons. That same newspaper may be quite easy to read and control when in an uncrowded environment such as sitting on a comfortable lounge. Thus we need to consider the type of environment when investigating participant preference for newspaper size.
Locations were varied in order to have a good range of reading environments. The main environments were cafes and coffee bars where there was seating in a number of arrangements, some in close quarters with other customers, others where there was ample room for spreading of the newspaper. These locations were around the University area where there is a very large shopping centre (Festival Walk). Participants were approached and asked if they would be willing to take part in the study. They were informed of the purpose of the study and the methods that would be employed. Most participants expressed, and maintained, interest in taking part in the experiments.
2.2. Participants
2.1. Newspapers 2.4. Testing techniques We tested five ‘standard’ sizes of newspaper, Broadsheet, Rhensch, Tabloid, Tall Tabloid and Berliner. The sizes of these newspapers were taken from Wikipedia, Newspaper format’ where it is noted that the sizes may vary slightly between different publishers. The sizes we used are given in Table 1. Newspapers were produced in-house to each of these sizes by reproducing articles from Hong Kong newspapers and placing these into templates of the required size. By this means we generated ‘real’ newspapers that were then printed so as to appear very much as a genuine paper. This allowed a real reading experience for the participants in the experiment, using articles about news and advertisements with which they would be familiar. With
Table 1 Newspaper page sizes used in the experiment. Width is with paper folded. Sizes are taken from Wikipedia. Newspaper
Height (mm)
Width (mm)
Broadsheet Rhensch Tabloid Tall Tabloid Berliner
600 530 430 413 370
370 360 280 260 315
Two approaches were used to determine subjective preferences for newspaper size: (i)Rating scales as shown in Table 2, using a nine-point scale with 12 statements related to the use of the newspaper. These statements related to the physical and visual comfort of using the paper as well as difficulty in several aspects of use. (ii)A method of paired comparisons was used in order to develop a scale of preference using Thurstone scaling, Case V (Edwards 1983). This method makes several assumptions that can be tested, the most important of which is that the preferences can be modelled on a single linear scale. A second important assumption is that the standard deviations of all the distributions of preferences are similar. Using this method, and the interval scale of preferences produced, it was possible to determine the geometrical factors of the newspaper size (height, width, area) that are related to the scale values.
2.5. Procedure In each case, the paired comparisons were first performed, followed by the rating scales. There were 10 possible pairings of the
S.N.H. Tsang et al. / Applied Ergonomics 45 (2014) 571e576
573
Fig. 1. Sample newspaper produced for the experiments. The sample is a double-page spread of a 360 530 mm (Rhensch) newspaper, unfolded, with front page on the right. The left-hand page is then the last page of the newspaper.
five newspapers using paired comparisons; these were given in a different random order for each of the participants. After sitting with each of the papers and manipulating them so that reasonably comfortable reading was possible (taking some minutes) and
actually reading the text of the papers, the participants made a preference judgement between the two paper sizes. Following experience with each of the paper sizes, the participants then filled out the scales for each of the 12 statements of Table 2.
Table 2 Rating scale used by participants to rate various factors associated with comfort and convenience of using papers of different sizes.
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Table 3 Mean values of rating on 9-point scale for each of the statements of Table 2. (given to one-decimal point). First cell entry is for Comfortable reading conditions; second entry for Uncomfortable conditions. Statement
Broadsheet
Rhensch
Tabloid
Tall tabloid
Berliner
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
7.2, 6.6, 4.6, 4.6, 5.0, 3.6, 5.3, 5.4, 5.3, 5.4, 5.8, 5.8,
7.0, 6.9, 3.8, 3.9, 4.6, 3.7, 5.5, 5.8, 6.1, 4.6, 5.4, 6.5,
6.5, 6.8, 3.0, 3.4, 3.4, 3.5, 6.0, 6.0, 7.0, 3.7, 5.3, 6.3,
5.8, 6.3, 3.3, 3.7, 3.4, 3.8, 6.0, 6.3, 7.2, 3.4, 4.8, 5.3,
4.7, 5.4, 3.0, 5.2, 3.8, 4.0, 5.9, 6.0, 6.4, 3.0, 4.7, 4.0,
6.0 4.6 7.4 5.9 6.4 5.3 3.9 5.1 4.0 6.4 4.9 3.6
6.1 5.5 6.7 5.0 5.9 5.2 4.7 5.4 4.7 6.0 4.6 4.9
6.3 6.8 4.3 3.9 4.3 4.6 6.3 6.4 6.6 3.4 5.0 6.6
5.9 6.6 3.9 3.5 3.9 4.2 6.4 6.3 6.9 3.5 5.1 6.1
5.4 5.1 3.6 4.7 4.4 5.1 5.9 5.6 6.1 3.4 4.8 4.5
3. Data analysis and results 3.1. Subjective rating scales Mean data, averaged over all subjects are shown in Table 3, where the numerals in the left-hand column refer to the statements in Table 2. A Factor Analysis of the responses to the subjective rating scales, using Varimax rotation, was performed. A scree plot indicated that three factors needed to be considered, both for the cases of comfortable and uncomfortable viewing of the newspaper. The Factor Analysis gave the following results: 3.1.1. Comfortable environment Factor 1: 3, 5, 7, 9, 10 (40.9%); Factor 2: 1, 2, 4 (23.5%); Factor 3: 11 (21.9%). These factors accounted for 86.4% of variance. The first factor is related to physical comfort; the second to the reading comfort and the third factor to the ease of folding pages. 3.1.2. Uncomfortable environment Factor 1: 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10 (59.6%); Factor 2: 1 (11.9%); Factor 3: 11 (11.3%). The three factors accounted for 82.8% of variance. The first factor relates to all forms of comfort when holding and reading the paper; the second to adequacy of the size of the paper and the third factor to the ease of folding pages. There were factors common to both reading environments. Physical comfort in each case was the dominant factor, related to the difficulty of holding the paper; in each case the ease of folding the paper was also of importance in these ratings.
Table 5 Mean preferences (nominal scale) and standard deviation (SD) of the five newspaper sizes for comfortable reading locations (N ¼ 143) and uncomfortable reading locations (N ¼ 140). Newspaper size
Reading condition Comfortable
Broadsheet Rhensch Tabloid Tall Tabloid Berliner
Uncomfortable
Mean
S.D.
Mean
S.D.
0
1.40 .43 .52 .76 1.88
0
1.23 1.08 1.12 1.05 .76
.09 .43 .34 .29
.87 2.41 1.97 1.74
Edwards (1983) gives a detailed explanation for the construction of scales by means of paired comparisons. The resulting scales are interval, with an arbitrary zero. Placing the least preferred paper at a scale value of zero, all others may be scaled relative to this value. The results of this scaling are given in Table 5 for the Comfortable and Uncomfortable reading environments. The analysis showed an average discrepancy of .032 between the theoretical proportions predicted by the model and the actual values in the case of the Comfortable environment and .039 in the case of the Cramped environment. A chi-square test to determine whether the actual and theoretical proportions were in accord yielded a value of c2 (6) ¼ 7.71 (NS, comfortable) and c2 (6) ¼ 125 (Cramped). The Uncomfortable case has a significant chi-square, indicating a lack of fit to the Case V model of Thurstone. Thus data for the Uncomfortable case were recalculated using the Case III model (Edwards, 1983) which takes into account the differing variances of the mean preferences. The assumption that all the newspaper preferences lay along a single dimension appears to be valid for the Comfortable case, but not for the cramped reading case in the Case V analysis. The Case III analysis produced a change in the preference ratings of the Tabloid, Tall Tabloid and Berliner papers. The differences in standard deviations in the Comfortable case, as seen in Table 5, did not affect the fit to the Case V model of Thurstone. The values for the Uncomfortable environment for Case III analysis are those shown in Table 5. Mean preference values are shown in Fig. 2. Using the mean preferences and standard deviations given in Table 5, the significances of differences (using t-tests) between the various preferences have been calculated and listed in Table 6. In the case of the comfortable environment, only four of the 10
3.2. Newspaper size preferences Results for the preferences are shown in Table 4 for both reading environments. Here the preferences are for the column papers relative to the row papers. For example, reading from this table, it is seen that the Rhensch format is preferred relative to the Broadsheet on 83 of the 143 presentations in the Comfortable environment. Table 4 Number of preferences of newspapers listed in left-hand column over the newspapers listed in the upper row. The first value in each cell (in italics) is for Comfortable locations (N ¼ 143); followed by the preference for uncomfortable/ cramped locations (N ¼ 140). Leading diagonal is assumed to have equal numbers of preference when a paper size is compared to itself. Broadsheet Broadsheet Rhensch Tabloid Tall Tab. Berliner
60, 50, 51, 61,
44 10 14 32
Rhensch
Tabloid
Tall tabloid
Berliner
83, 96
93, 130 99, 117
92, 126 86, 109 69, 51
82, 79, 65, 78,
44, 23 57, 31 64, 39
74, 89 78, 92
65, 86
108 101 48 54
Fig. 2. Mean paired-comparison ratings of preference (nominal scale, relative to Broadsheet), for five different newspaper sizes, developed using the Thurstone Case V technique for Comfortable reading conditions (C) and Case III for uncomfortable reading conditions (U). A higher value indicates a stronger preference.
S.N.H. Tsang et al. / Applied Ergonomics 45 (2014) 571e576 Table 6 Pattern of significant differences (t-tests) between newspaper preferences. First value in cell is for comfortable viewing; second value is for uncomfortable/cramped viewing conditions.
Rhensch Tabloid Tall tabloid Berliner
Broadsheet
Rhensch
Tabloid
Tall tabloid
NS; <.001 <.005; <.001 <.01; <.001 NS; <.001
<.001; <.001 <.005; <.001 NS; <.001
NS; <.01 NS; <.001
NS; <.05
comparisons are significantly different. However, when in the Uncomfortable environment, all comparisons are significantly different. This difference between preferences is clearly seen in Fig. 2, for each of the two reading environments. 3.3. Relationship between scaled preferences and paper sizes Regressions between preference values and geometric characteristics of the newspapers are presented below. These regressions were initially done with a stepwise method and, in each case, the only variable entered was the area of the newspaper (height width), measured in m2. For both Comfortable and Uncomfortable conditions, Area accounted for 86% of variance. In regressions in which height and width were entered, only the width of the sheet was significant, in each case accounting for 81% and 76% of variance. Thus the overall size of the newspaper was shown to be significantly related to the preference for newspaper size, with the width accounting for the major part of the preference values.
Comfortable preference ¼ :73 3:28ðAreaÞ;
r 2 ¼ :86 r 2 ¼ :81
Comfortable preference ¼ 1:32 :00345ðWidthÞ; Uncomfortable preference ¼ 4:07 17:6ðAreaÞ;
r 2 ¼ :86
Uncomfortable preference ¼ 7:12 :0181ðWidthÞ;
r 2 ¼ :76
3.4. Relationship between preferences and ratings Stepwise regressions were carried out to determine which of the ratings (Table 2) were related to the preferences for the different newspapers.
Comfortable preference ¼ 2:64 :33ð1Þ :19ð8Þ;
r 2 ¼ :99
In this equation, the numbers (1) and (8) refer to the statements in Table 2. The two terms accounted for 97% and 2% of variance, respectively. Statement 1 is related to the “adequate size of the newspaper”. Thus, as preference for this case is also dependent mainly on the area of the newspaper, it appears that, when the environment is comfortable, it is just the paper overall size that determines the preference for the paper.
575
4. Discussion With many daily newspapers now changing from Broadsheet to the smaller Compact (Tabloid) format, the question was asked whether there is some difference in comfort and preference of readers when reading newspapers of different sizes, particularly when reading in different physical environments. This is apparently the case as experiments showed a clear preference for the smaller format sized paper. In both comfortable and uncomfortable environments, the rank order of ratings for newspaper size was the same: from least preferred to most preferred, this order was Broadsheet, Rhensch, Berliner, Tall Tabloid and Tabloid. It should be noted, however, that the study did not consider long-term comfort. In each case of comparison, the participants were holding each newspaper for only a matter of minutes. This might be considered ‘browsing’ rather than a form of reading that required high attention levels. It is not known if preferences may be different when long-term reading is done; it is however considered unlikely as the data show similar effects for both environmental conditions. Data (Fig. 2) show that the critical case for determining preferences for newspaper size is that of the uncomfortable environment as would be found on a train, in a crowded restaurant or other locations where there is limited ability to extend the arms. In the uncomfortable environment, the participants used a much wider range of preferences than in the comfortable environment e these are illustrated in Fig. 2. Most of the variance for regressions between preferences and newspaper size is accounted for by the width of the paper, with area of the paper also being an important variable. It appears that there is good reason for the change in newspaper sizes that are now occurring e reader’s preferences give a strong relationship to the smaller formats. All of the participants in these experiments were randomly approached in environments such as coffee lounges or cafes, where it was possible to select people who were (i) working/ eating within the required environment and (ii) were willing to take the time to participate. Thus the groups are not necessarily balanced in terms of age or gender. In some cases, participants started the tests with enthusiasm but, as time went on, some tired of the tests and tended to hurry with their ratings. This is a limitation of the selection of participants and environments that is difficult to avoid. The Factor Analyses were essentially in agreement in the two reading environments, with the comfort variables being of major importance in both cases. These analyses showed that newspaper size was a major factor in determining reading comfort. Anthropometric factors were not measured in this study due to the difficulty and possible embarrassment caused in crowded public environments. Such data would have assisted in interpretation of data of comfort. Data such as full arm spread, arm spread available in the different environments, location of grip on the paper, arm spread actually used while reading and vertical location of the hands relative to the thighs would help such an analysis. However, even without this anthropometric data, we do know that there was a wide range of body sizes of participants and that was one major aim in selection of participants.
Uncomfortable preference ¼ 13:0 þ 1:80ð7Þ þ :93ð4Þ; r 2 ¼ :99 5. Conclusion Here the two terms accounted for 95% and 4% of the variance. Statement 7 is due to a physical fatigue “The paper can be held for an extended period”. Statement 4 is that “The paper is awkward to read”. Thus, in a cramped or uncomfortable environment, it is the size of the paper (particularly the width as seen in the above regressions) that determines the ratings for the paper size.
In both comfortable and cramped reading environments, the small format Tabloid (Compact) newspaper is the most preferred size for reading. Ratings and preferences indicate that the size of the paper, and largely the width, is the major determinant of reading comfort.
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References ’Future of Newspapers’ Conference, 12 & 13 September 2007. The Cardiff Centre for Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies. Edwards, A.L., 1983. Techniques of Attitude Scale Construction. Appleton-CenturyCrofts Inc, New York. Holmqvist, K., Wartenberg, C., 2005. The role of local design factors for newspaper reading behaviour e an eye-tracking respective. Lund University Cognitive Studies 127. Lundqvist, D., Holmqvist, K., 2001. Bigger is better: how size of newspaper advertisement and reader attitude relate to attention and memory. In: Presentation at the ECEM 11, Turkus, Finland.
News Corporation, April 13 2005. Speech by Rupert Murdoch to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Available at: http://www.newscorp.com/news/ news_247.html. Newspaper Marketing Agency, 2013. http://www.newsworks.org.uk/MarketOverview (accessed February 2013). Rowe, D., 2011. Obituary for the newspaper? Tracking the tabloid. Journalism 12 (4), 449e466. Slattery, L., November 8th, 2012. Awkward Paper Size Matters at the ‘Indo’. Irish Times. Stone, P.M., 2012. Size Counts e Tabloids Lead the Way. www.astonesthrow.ch/ analysis_tabloid2.htm (accessed January 2012). Sydney Morning Herald, January 31st 2012. Poll: Newspaper Size: Your Preference. Wikipedia. Newspaper Format. (accessed September 2012).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Applied Ergonomics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apergo
Preference for newspaper size Steve N.H. Tsang, Errol R. Hoffmann*, Alan H.S. Chan Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 13 March 2013 Accepted 31 July 2013
The past few years has seen a change in the size of newspapers, with publishers moving to a smaller size format. Five ‘standard’ newspaper sizes are used in different countries: Broadsheet, Rhensch, Tabloid, Tall Tabloid and Berliner. These papers vary in both width and height of pages and hence there are implications for human reading comfort, which may be dependent on reading location such as on a lounge chair or on a train. Experiments were carried out to determine preferences for the different sizes and to relate these preferences to the geometric characteristics of the newspapers. For both comfortable and cramped/uncomfortable reading conditions, the rank order of preference for paper types was, from least to most-preferred, Broadsheet, Rhensch, Berliner, Tall Tabloid and Tabloid. Preferences were much stronger when determined in cramped/uncomfortable reading conditions, where most comparisons were significantly different. There was good correlation between participant ratings on several scales and preference, where most factors were related to comfort of holding and controlling the paper. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd and The Ergonomics Society. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Reading comfort Newspaper size Scaling
1. Introduction Many newspapers are currently changing from large format (Broadsheet) to a smaller format (Tabloid or Berliner). In the UK, this has already taken place with the London Times, The Independent (both to Tabloid) and the Guardian to the Berliner format. The Broadsheet is the largest format and has generally been associated with ‘quality’ newspapers. The Tabloid format is also known as a ‘Compact’ format by former Broadsheet newspapers in order to avoid the stigma associated with tabloid journalism (Rowe, 2011). The change to smaller formats is also happening in other countries. For example, the two major Australian broadsheet quality newspapers, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age, changed to the Compact format in March 2013. Their weekend papers are, however, still produced in the Broadsheet format. This change in weekday format occurred even though a survey of 14,000 readers voted 47% to retain the Broadsheet format, while 29% voted for the Tabloid and 10% for the Berliner format (SMH, 2012). However, in their first issue with the compact format (3rd March 2013), it is described how “100 readers were asked to read both broadsheet and compact versions of the newspapers in real-life conditions for 10 min while wearing specialised head caps”.
* Corresponding author. PO Box 89, Halls Gap, Victoria 3381, Australia. Tel.: þ61 613 53564529. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] (E.R. Hoffmann).
These head caps had 80 electrodes that “pick up on subtle measures of brain activity which indicated levels of engagement, emotional intensity and memory encoding, or what is committed to memory. Combined with eye-tracking technology . the neurological testing revealed how engaged readers were with the papers. The compacts were found to be more engaging than the broadsheets (page 20). Similar changes from large to smaller formats are happening in other parts of the world; in Switzerland the Blick has changed from Broadsheet to Tabloid (Stone, 2012); in Germany there is a compact version of Die Welt (Welt Kompakti). A review of the changes that are occurring in the newspaper industry is given in the proceedings of “The Future of Newspapers Conference” (2007). Newspapers that are produced in two size versions have in recent years found reader preference for the smaller format, with increasing sales of the Tabloid format compared with the Broadsheet format. This has occurred with the Irish Times (Slattery, 2012). Similarly, The Times of London offered readers both Tabloid (Compact) and Broadsheet formats for nearly a year, with the only difference lying in their sizes. It was found that most readers opted for the Tabloid format because of its convenience in size (News Corporation, 2005). Considering all newspapers in the UK, the average daily circulations of the tabloid newspapers are much higher than that of the broadsheet papers (Newspaper Marketing Agency, 2013). Reasons for publishers making the change of format are not always clear: Smaller formats give more convenient handling of the paper and are more popular with the younger population of readers, are several reasons that have been given. Holmqvist and
0003-6870/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd and The Ergonomics Society. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2013.07.015
572
S.N.H. Tsang et al. / Applied Ergonomics 45 (2014) 571e576
each format, the articles were identical, although they were distributed in a different manner. In order to eliminate any effects of different weights of paper, the smaller formats had more pages so that the overall weight of the papers was close to constant. A sample newspaper is shown in Fig. 1 in the Rhensch format. The newspapers were produced with both Chinese and English articles to allow a larger range of participants. The newspaper name ‘Festival Daily’ arises from the location of City University near the Festival Walk shopping centre.
Constanze (2005) found that Tabloid format made more efficient use of paper than Broadsheet format did, as the time readers spent per square centimetre was 47% higher for tabloid spreads. Downsides appear to be the shorter article lengths and the decrease in size for advertising. It is this latter that is of concern to publishers as advertisement sizes are decreased and hence income to the newspaper may be reduced. Besides, it was reported that the bigger the size of the advertisement the better the readers see, like and remember it (Lundqvist and Holmqvist, 2001). Sales of the newspaper may also be affected and opinions seem to be divided on the effects of size change as, in some cases, there have been increased sales with the smaller format, while others have reported decreased sales (Stone, 2012; Slattery, 2012; Future of Newspapers Conference, 2007). There does not appear to be any published information on human preferences for newspaper size, although it is likely that there is in-house research (as noted above for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age) made when a change of format is considered. The reader survey published in the Sydney Morning Herald is far from scientific (as stated in the newspaper) as it is a vote of readers that was carried out on-line. Thus the aim of the present research was to attempt to determine if there are differences in the preferences in newspaper size of a reader population and attempt to correlate the preferences with the geometric size of the newspapers.
Two separate groups of participants were tested; 143 in a comfortable environment (no interference from adjacent persons) and 140 in cramped environments where there was the possibility of interference due to adjacent persons. If participants were to avoid interference, cramped postures and discomfort in the reading environment resulted. Of the 143 participants in the comfortable environment, 77 were male and 66 female. Ages in this group ranged from 22 to 52, with a median of 29 years. The cramped group consisted of 98 males and 42 females with ages ranging from 20 to35, with a median of 22.5 years. Age and gender were not of specific interest in this study and hence participants were selected on the basis of their willingness to take part in the experiment.
2. Method
2.3. Testing locations
Newspapers are read in a number of different environments, which may affect the preference for a particular size. For example, reading a Broadsheet while sitting in a cramped or crowded environment such a train or café may be quite difficult in terms of holding the paper to a comfortable reading distance, turning the pages and avoiding interference with adjacent persons. That same newspaper may be quite easy to read and control when in an uncrowded environment such as sitting on a comfortable lounge. Thus we need to consider the type of environment when investigating participant preference for newspaper size.
Locations were varied in order to have a good range of reading environments. The main environments were cafes and coffee bars where there was seating in a number of arrangements, some in close quarters with other customers, others where there was ample room for spreading of the newspaper. These locations were around the University area where there is a very large shopping centre (Festival Walk). Participants were approached and asked if they would be willing to take part in the study. They were informed of the purpose of the study and the methods that would be employed. Most participants expressed, and maintained, interest in taking part in the experiments.
2.2. Participants
2.1. Newspapers 2.4. Testing techniques We tested five ‘standard’ sizes of newspaper, Broadsheet, Rhensch, Tabloid, Tall Tabloid and Berliner. The sizes of these newspapers were taken from Wikipedia, Newspaper format’ where it is noted that the sizes may vary slightly between different publishers. The sizes we used are given in Table 1. Newspapers were produced in-house to each of these sizes by reproducing articles from Hong Kong newspapers and placing these into templates of the required size. By this means we generated ‘real’ newspapers that were then printed so as to appear very much as a genuine paper. This allowed a real reading experience for the participants in the experiment, using articles about news and advertisements with which they would be familiar. With
Table 1 Newspaper page sizes used in the experiment. Width is with paper folded. Sizes are taken from Wikipedia. Newspaper
Height (mm)
Width (mm)
Broadsheet Rhensch Tabloid Tall Tabloid Berliner
600 530 430 413 370
370 360 280 260 315
Two approaches were used to determine subjective preferences for newspaper size: (i)Rating scales as shown in Table 2, using a nine-point scale with 12 statements related to the use of the newspaper. These statements related to the physical and visual comfort of using the paper as well as difficulty in several aspects of use. (ii)A method of paired comparisons was used in order to develop a scale of preference using Thurstone scaling, Case V (Edwards 1983). This method makes several assumptions that can be tested, the most important of which is that the preferences can be modelled on a single linear scale. A second important assumption is that the standard deviations of all the distributions of preferences are similar. Using this method, and the interval scale of preferences produced, it was possible to determine the geometrical factors of the newspaper size (height, width, area) that are related to the scale values.
2.5. Procedure In each case, the paired comparisons were first performed, followed by the rating scales. There were 10 possible pairings of the
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Fig. 1. Sample newspaper produced for the experiments. The sample is a double-page spread of a 360 530 mm (Rhensch) newspaper, unfolded, with front page on the right. The left-hand page is then the last page of the newspaper.
five newspapers using paired comparisons; these were given in a different random order for each of the participants. After sitting with each of the papers and manipulating them so that reasonably comfortable reading was possible (taking some minutes) and
actually reading the text of the papers, the participants made a preference judgement between the two paper sizes. Following experience with each of the paper sizes, the participants then filled out the scales for each of the 12 statements of Table 2.
Table 2 Rating scale used by participants to rate various factors associated with comfort and convenience of using papers of different sizes.
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Table 3 Mean values of rating on 9-point scale for each of the statements of Table 2. (given to one-decimal point). First cell entry is for Comfortable reading conditions; second entry for Uncomfortable conditions. Statement
Broadsheet
Rhensch
Tabloid
Tall tabloid
Berliner
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
7.2, 6.6, 4.6, 4.6, 5.0, 3.6, 5.3, 5.4, 5.3, 5.4, 5.8, 5.8,
7.0, 6.9, 3.8, 3.9, 4.6, 3.7, 5.5, 5.8, 6.1, 4.6, 5.4, 6.5,
6.5, 6.8, 3.0, 3.4, 3.4, 3.5, 6.0, 6.0, 7.0, 3.7, 5.3, 6.3,
5.8, 6.3, 3.3, 3.7, 3.4, 3.8, 6.0, 6.3, 7.2, 3.4, 4.8, 5.3,
4.7, 5.4, 3.0, 5.2, 3.8, 4.0, 5.9, 6.0, 6.4, 3.0, 4.7, 4.0,
6.0 4.6 7.4 5.9 6.4 5.3 3.9 5.1 4.0 6.4 4.9 3.6
6.1 5.5 6.7 5.0 5.9 5.2 4.7 5.4 4.7 6.0 4.6 4.9
6.3 6.8 4.3 3.9 4.3 4.6 6.3 6.4 6.6 3.4 5.0 6.6
5.9 6.6 3.9 3.5 3.9 4.2 6.4 6.3 6.9 3.5 5.1 6.1
5.4 5.1 3.6 4.7 4.4 5.1 5.9 5.6 6.1 3.4 4.8 4.5
3. Data analysis and results 3.1. Subjective rating scales Mean data, averaged over all subjects are shown in Table 3, where the numerals in the left-hand column refer to the statements in Table 2. A Factor Analysis of the responses to the subjective rating scales, using Varimax rotation, was performed. A scree plot indicated that three factors needed to be considered, both for the cases of comfortable and uncomfortable viewing of the newspaper. The Factor Analysis gave the following results: 3.1.1. Comfortable environment Factor 1: 3, 5, 7, 9, 10 (40.9%); Factor 2: 1, 2, 4 (23.5%); Factor 3: 11 (21.9%). These factors accounted for 86.4% of variance. The first factor is related to physical comfort; the second to the reading comfort and the third factor to the ease of folding pages. 3.1.2. Uncomfortable environment Factor 1: 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10 (59.6%); Factor 2: 1 (11.9%); Factor 3: 11 (11.3%). The three factors accounted for 82.8% of variance. The first factor relates to all forms of comfort when holding and reading the paper; the second to adequacy of the size of the paper and the third factor to the ease of folding pages. There were factors common to both reading environments. Physical comfort in each case was the dominant factor, related to the difficulty of holding the paper; in each case the ease of folding the paper was also of importance in these ratings.
Table 5 Mean preferences (nominal scale) and standard deviation (SD) of the five newspaper sizes for comfortable reading locations (N ¼ 143) and uncomfortable reading locations (N ¼ 140). Newspaper size
Reading condition Comfortable
Broadsheet Rhensch Tabloid Tall Tabloid Berliner
Uncomfortable
Mean
S.D.
Mean
S.D.
0
1.40 .43 .52 .76 1.88
0
1.23 1.08 1.12 1.05 .76
.09 .43 .34 .29
.87 2.41 1.97 1.74
Edwards (1983) gives a detailed explanation for the construction of scales by means of paired comparisons. The resulting scales are interval, with an arbitrary zero. Placing the least preferred paper at a scale value of zero, all others may be scaled relative to this value. The results of this scaling are given in Table 5 for the Comfortable and Uncomfortable reading environments. The analysis showed an average discrepancy of .032 between the theoretical proportions predicted by the model and the actual values in the case of the Comfortable environment and .039 in the case of the Cramped environment. A chi-square test to determine whether the actual and theoretical proportions were in accord yielded a value of c2 (6) ¼ 7.71 (NS, comfortable) and c2 (6) ¼ 125 (Cramped). The Uncomfortable case has a significant chi-square, indicating a lack of fit to the Case V model of Thurstone. Thus data for the Uncomfortable case were recalculated using the Case III model (Edwards, 1983) which takes into account the differing variances of the mean preferences. The assumption that all the newspaper preferences lay along a single dimension appears to be valid for the Comfortable case, but not for the cramped reading case in the Case V analysis. The Case III analysis produced a change in the preference ratings of the Tabloid, Tall Tabloid and Berliner papers. The differences in standard deviations in the Comfortable case, as seen in Table 5, did not affect the fit to the Case V model of Thurstone. The values for the Uncomfortable environment for Case III analysis are those shown in Table 5. Mean preference values are shown in Fig. 2. Using the mean preferences and standard deviations given in Table 5, the significances of differences (using t-tests) between the various preferences have been calculated and listed in Table 6. In the case of the comfortable environment, only four of the 10
3.2. Newspaper size preferences Results for the preferences are shown in Table 4 for both reading environments. Here the preferences are for the column papers relative to the row papers. For example, reading from this table, it is seen that the Rhensch format is preferred relative to the Broadsheet on 83 of the 143 presentations in the Comfortable environment. Table 4 Number of preferences of newspapers listed in left-hand column over the newspapers listed in the upper row. The first value in each cell (in italics) is for Comfortable locations (N ¼ 143); followed by the preference for uncomfortable/ cramped locations (N ¼ 140). Leading diagonal is assumed to have equal numbers of preference when a paper size is compared to itself. Broadsheet Broadsheet Rhensch Tabloid Tall Tab. Berliner
60, 50, 51, 61,
44 10 14 32
Rhensch
Tabloid
Tall tabloid
Berliner
83, 96
93, 130 99, 117
92, 126 86, 109 69, 51
82, 79, 65, 78,
44, 23 57, 31 64, 39
74, 89 78, 92
65, 86
108 101 48 54
Fig. 2. Mean paired-comparison ratings of preference (nominal scale, relative to Broadsheet), for five different newspaper sizes, developed using the Thurstone Case V technique for Comfortable reading conditions (C) and Case III for uncomfortable reading conditions (U). A higher value indicates a stronger preference.
S.N.H. Tsang et al. / Applied Ergonomics 45 (2014) 571e576 Table 6 Pattern of significant differences (t-tests) between newspaper preferences. First value in cell is for comfortable viewing; second value is for uncomfortable/cramped viewing conditions.
Rhensch Tabloid Tall tabloid Berliner
Broadsheet
Rhensch
Tabloid
Tall tabloid
NS; <.001 <.005; <.001 <.01; <.001 NS; <.001
<.001; <.001 <.005; <.001 NS; <.001
NS; <.01 NS; <.001
NS; <.05
comparisons are significantly different. However, when in the Uncomfortable environment, all comparisons are significantly different. This difference between preferences is clearly seen in Fig. 2, for each of the two reading environments. 3.3. Relationship between scaled preferences and paper sizes Regressions between preference values and geometric characteristics of the newspapers are presented below. These regressions were initially done with a stepwise method and, in each case, the only variable entered was the area of the newspaper (height width), measured in m2. For both Comfortable and Uncomfortable conditions, Area accounted for 86% of variance. In regressions in which height and width were entered, only the width of the sheet was significant, in each case accounting for 81% and 76% of variance. Thus the overall size of the newspaper was shown to be significantly related to the preference for newspaper size, with the width accounting for the major part of the preference values.
Comfortable preference ¼ :73 3:28ðAreaÞ;
r 2 ¼ :86 r 2 ¼ :81
Comfortable preference ¼ 1:32 :00345ðWidthÞ; Uncomfortable preference ¼ 4:07 17:6ðAreaÞ;
r 2 ¼ :86
Uncomfortable preference ¼ 7:12 :0181ðWidthÞ;
r 2 ¼ :76
3.4. Relationship between preferences and ratings Stepwise regressions were carried out to determine which of the ratings (Table 2) were related to the preferences for the different newspapers.
Comfortable preference ¼ 2:64 :33ð1Þ :19ð8Þ;
r 2 ¼ :99
In this equation, the numbers (1) and (8) refer to the statements in Table 2. The two terms accounted for 97% and 2% of variance, respectively. Statement 1 is related to the “adequate size of the newspaper”. Thus, as preference for this case is also dependent mainly on the area of the newspaper, it appears that, when the environment is comfortable, it is just the paper overall size that determines the preference for the paper.
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4. Discussion With many daily newspapers now changing from Broadsheet to the smaller Compact (Tabloid) format, the question was asked whether there is some difference in comfort and preference of readers when reading newspapers of different sizes, particularly when reading in different physical environments. This is apparently the case as experiments showed a clear preference for the smaller format sized paper. In both comfortable and uncomfortable environments, the rank order of ratings for newspaper size was the same: from least preferred to most preferred, this order was Broadsheet, Rhensch, Berliner, Tall Tabloid and Tabloid. It should be noted, however, that the study did not consider long-term comfort. In each case of comparison, the participants were holding each newspaper for only a matter of minutes. This might be considered ‘browsing’ rather than a form of reading that required high attention levels. It is not known if preferences may be different when long-term reading is done; it is however considered unlikely as the data show similar effects for both environmental conditions. Data (Fig. 2) show that the critical case for determining preferences for newspaper size is that of the uncomfortable environment as would be found on a train, in a crowded restaurant or other locations where there is limited ability to extend the arms. In the uncomfortable environment, the participants used a much wider range of preferences than in the comfortable environment e these are illustrated in Fig. 2. Most of the variance for regressions between preferences and newspaper size is accounted for by the width of the paper, with area of the paper also being an important variable. It appears that there is good reason for the change in newspaper sizes that are now occurring e reader’s preferences give a strong relationship to the smaller formats. All of the participants in these experiments were randomly approached in environments such as coffee lounges or cafes, where it was possible to select people who were (i) working/ eating within the required environment and (ii) were willing to take the time to participate. Thus the groups are not necessarily balanced in terms of age or gender. In some cases, participants started the tests with enthusiasm but, as time went on, some tired of the tests and tended to hurry with their ratings. This is a limitation of the selection of participants and environments that is difficult to avoid. The Factor Analyses were essentially in agreement in the two reading environments, with the comfort variables being of major importance in both cases. These analyses showed that newspaper size was a major factor in determining reading comfort. Anthropometric factors were not measured in this study due to the difficulty and possible embarrassment caused in crowded public environments. Such data would have assisted in interpretation of data of comfort. Data such as full arm spread, arm spread available in the different environments, location of grip on the paper, arm spread actually used while reading and vertical location of the hands relative to the thighs would help such an analysis. However, even without this anthropometric data, we do know that there was a wide range of body sizes of participants and that was one major aim in selection of participants.
Uncomfortable preference ¼ 13:0 þ 1:80ð7Þ þ :93ð4Þ; r 2 ¼ :99 5. Conclusion Here the two terms accounted for 95% and 4% of the variance. Statement 7 is due to a physical fatigue “The paper can be held for an extended period”. Statement 4 is that “The paper is awkward to read”. Thus, in a cramped or uncomfortable environment, it is the size of the paper (particularly the width as seen in the above regressions) that determines the ratings for the paper size.
In both comfortable and cramped reading environments, the small format Tabloid (Compact) newspaper is the most preferred size for reading. Ratings and preferences indicate that the size of the paper, and largely the width, is the major determinant of reading comfort.
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