Contributing to this stability is the re-use of the small-urban/rural sample from the previous AMPS release. Usually, each new AMPS release introduces a new small-urban/rural sample, covering the next six months of the year. For AMPS Dec 13, the SAARF Board decided not to interview the small-urban/rural sample in the July to December 2013 period, but to re-use the January-June 2013 data.
The result of this is that any changes seen in this release are from audience shifts in large urban areas: metros, cities and large towns, all with community sizes of over 40,000.
AMPS Jun 13 (July 2012-June 2013) marked the start of a new trendline for media, following the inclusion of new population estimates modelled on data from Statistics SA's Census 2011.
The new population estimates had a marked effect on AMPS Jun 13, radically changing the playing field so that surveys prior to the update were not comparable.
AMPS Dec 13, as the second release after the population update, can be trended against AMPS Jun 13.
