Abstract:

The National Savings Committee organises three forms of National Savings on behalf of the Government. A large scale motivation research enquiry was commissioned by the Committee with the primary purpose of providing advertising guidance. This paper describes the exploratory depth research and the methodological pilot work which formed the preliminary stages of the enquiry. The depth research enabled a typology of saving to be described and showed how the type and amount of saving done was related to a person's position in the life cycle. A number of attitudes relating to saving were identified and attitudes to particular forms of saving were found to be strongly affected by what was known about them. The methodological pilot involved two factor analyses, the results of which are described in the paper. The first factor analysis confirmed the attitude dimensions identified from the depth interviews and enabled opinion statements to be selected for the formation of attitude scales for use in the main survey. The second factor analysis was concerned with the interaction of knowledge of savings methods and the images of those methods. This factor analysis was of limited use but led to the formation of a method of analysis for interrelating use, knowledge and images of savings methods.