CHAPTER IV
TIME AND ATTENTION
Naturally it is possible to make a rough estimate only of the amount of attention people give each day to informing themselves about public affairs. Yet it is interesting that three estimates that I have examined agree tolerably well, though they were made at different times, in different places, and by different methods.[1]
A questionnaire was sent by Hotchkiss and Franken to 1761 men and women college students in New York City, and answers came from all but a few. Scott used a questionnaire on four thousand prominent business and professional men in Chicago and received replies from twenty-three hundred. Between seventy and seventy-five percent of all those who replied to either inquiry thought they spent a quarter of an hour a day reading newspapers. Only four percent of the Chicago group guessed at less than this and twenty-five percent guessed at more. Among the New Yorkers a little over eight percent
- ↑ July, 1900. D. F. Wilcox, The American Newspaper: A Study in Social Psychology, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. xvi, p. 56. (The statistical tables are reproduced in James Edward Rogers, The American Newspaper.)
1916 (?) W. D. Scott, The Psychology of Advertising, pp. 226–248. See also Henry Foster Adams, Advertising and its Mental Laws, Ch. IV.
1920 Newspaper Reading Habits of College Students, by Prof. George Burton Hotchkiss and Richard B. Franken, published by the Association of National Advertisers, Inc., 15 East 26th Street, New York City.
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