Mass media use in Australia, 1979

A broad survey of media use based on a national sample was considered essential to a better understanding of the mass media and their effect and operations in Australia. As information collected in a 1966 survey had become increasingly dated, it was considered important to repeat the national survey if more closely focussed works were going to ask why the patterns uncovered had established themselves. As well, sufficient change had taken place in media use and evaluation in Australia to warrant some attention being given to the period after the television medium had become firmly established. Topics investigated were newspaper readership, radio ownership, and stations and programmes listened to, television set ownership, frequency of watching and programmes watched, opinions on political coverage and bias of the mass media, and political party preference. Background variables were country of birth, party voted for in elections, occupation, sex, level of schooling, age, self-assessed social class, number of persons and children in household, ages of these children, trade union membership and telephone ownership.