High RPC rates plausible – international consultant

Meier was auditing the All Media and Products Survey on the invitation of SAARF, in order to determine whether AMPS gives valid results comparable to internationally accepted standards.

According to Meier, the RPC figures derived using AMPS readership, with the exception of newspapers, seem "quite similar to other surveys" he has seen around the world.

"There is a wide range of figures, with the lowest being 1.1 readers-per-copy, and the highest 29.5," he comments. "This is not too different compared with the UK National Readership Survey, where, for example, every fifth of nearly 70 general monthly publications shows an RPC figure higher than 10, with the highest being 15.3."

He says that these figures tend to be explained through pass-on and public place reading (for example, at hairdressers).

Meier notes that while it is true that AMPS seems to have a few publications for which the RPC estimates seem particularly high, a look at the titles and target groups of these publications shows that the results are plausible.

As to newspapers, Meier says that the relatively high newspaper RPC estimates compared with other surveys known to him, seem to be easily explained through demographic and social differences in South Africa compared with other (mainly Western) countries.

^*By dividing SAARF's AMPS average issue readership figures by the ABC's circulation figures, one can determine how many people on average read each copy of the title. This RPC rate can, however, seem implausibly high for some titles.