The relationship between attributes of a children's radio program and its appeal to listeners

Abstract

An approach was developed to investigate the link between attributes of a children's radio program and children's judgments of appeal. Program tapes were divided into 28 segments and were rated for the presence of 30 attributes. Through multidimensional scaling analysis, attributes were organized into six clusters of “Superattributes” on the basis of their co-occurrence across the 28 segments. Superattributes were labeled and assigned scores that reflected the degree to which each was present in the 28 segments. A sample of 42 children 8–12 years old listened to the test tapes and provided a written judgment of their interest in the program at each segment. Results revealed that the Superattributes “Instruction,” “Intro Talk,” and “Jokes” were negatively associated with children's interest, while “Popular Music” was positively correlated with interest. In planning programs and understanding the effects of radio on children, designers and researchers should pay special attention to those formats in radio programming that are familiar to children, especially popular music and instructional material.