Abstract:

The JUNIOR '91 RESEARCH is a survey on a specialized collectivity: children. The survey is conducted on a sample of 3.078 children, aged Jun-13 years, and the main aim of the research is to measure readership of magazines for children. But it is also an important opportunity to record some relevant information such as: children exposure to TV programmes, products consumption (food, clothes, durables), ways of spending free-time, money at their disposal, children's influence on family decisions. Children in fact, despite their steady decrease in number, have become a privileged segment of society. Not only children have more money at their disposal, but they buy or receive more products as well. In comparison with the other population segments, children are more interested in technology: video and audio recorders, audio-tapes, video-tapes, disks, videogames and so on, as they have a natural tendency toward new technologies, more than older people. In addition, they have a great influence on family decisions about a lot of consumptions. Fields in which they have more family influence are: clothes, food, spare time activities. In this research, a new method has been used to estimate the average children's influence on family decisions. As far as media research results are concerned , the estimates of readership for the 20 magazines (made according to the method of the national readership) has pointed out the large coverage insured by these vehicles during a longer period of time, but also the relatively limited coverage in the recent period. In any case, a few of these magazines have an enlarged audience (in recent period) , similar to that of the main children TV programmes. On the other end, readers (and overall recent readers) are wealthier than the average of the collectivity and of TV watchers.