AUDIENCE RESEARCH

The socio-economic status (or the ABC Scale) was created by the National Readership Survey to gather statistics on media audiences for television, radio and all for of publications. The Socio-economic status has been around since media has been become a large part of modern culture and has been one of the most used forms of audience readership evaluations/surveyors. It was established as a form of classifying and describing social classes for media outlets. The Earnings of jobs as well as the Age, gender, religious views are taken in to account when conducting survey as it helps to understand the audience better.

The Groups A, B, C1, C2, D and E classes the employment job roles into the following:

A – Upper Class (Higher managerial, administrative and professional, such as Mangers, Lawyers, all high paying jobs earning demographic would be around £50,000 and over)

B – Middle Class (Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional, such as deputy secretary and or above average pay, earning demographic would be around £35-50,000)

C1 – Lower Middle class (Supervisory or Clerical, junior managerial, administrative, such as a supervisor or highly skilled working job (one where more than one skill is required))

C2 – Skilled working class (Skilled Manuel workers, such as mechanics, etc)

Please note for C1 and C2 the earning range is for both £15,000 – 25,000

D – Lower working class (Semi and unskilled Manuel workers, such as mechanical trainees, or shop workers, earning demographic would be around £7,000 – 15,000)

E – Lowest level of income earners (pensioners or widows, casual or lowest grade workers, those on Benefits, such as students, earning demographic would be around £5,000-7,000)