The use of tape or video recorders in research is now well-established and widely accepted by informants. Two issues arise under the International Code of Marketing and Social Research Practice:1. What form of permission must be obtained from informants when such equipment is used?2. How far can tape or video recordings be played and/or supplied to people outside the research organization carrying out the research?These two issues are interrelated. The reasons why they are important are that informants' right to withdraw from the interview or to have any or all of the information they have given destroyed, must be protected and no element of deception should be involved in this connection, and there must be no danger of breaching the rules in anonymity.
In a readership survey conducted in London, one interview in every three had been tape recorded. Through follow-up intensive interviews, conducted the next day, estimates were developed of the accuracy of certain of the information collected in the first interview. This situation provided an opportunity to compare: a. the estimated accuracy of information collected in the readership survey when a tape recorder was used with b. the estimated accuracy of such information when a tape recorder was not used. The recorded and the non-recorded samples were closely matched, on an empirical basis, in order to increase the meaningfulness of the comparison of (estimated) accuracy with and without the recorder being used. The comparison made here is of 189 recorded estimates (from 105 people) and of 430 non-recorded estimates (from 226 people). The small numbers involved make this a small-scale study, so that its results must be regarded as indicative and not final.