Estimating Self-Reported News Exposure Across and Within Typical Days: Should Surveys Use More Refined Measures?

Mass communication researchers have an interest in accurately measuring media exposure. Survey measures often ask respondents about the number of days in a week or the hours in a day that they use a medium. These two strategies (and their composite-- hours per week) have yet to be directly compared to one another; so their relative usefulness for researchers is unknown. Analyses of data from the 2008 American National Election Studies Time Series Study suggest few benefits from measuring news exposure using both approaches. The measures of exposure as days per week, minutes per day, and minutes per week (the product of the first two) operate very similarly as predictors of political knowledge, perceived issue distances between presidential candidates, days per week talking about politics, levels of community involvement, and voter turnout.