Research Report : How to Perceive Media Use Activities: Considerations on the 2020 NHK Japanese Time Use Survey

From Focus Group Interviews on Questionnaire

Abstract

A major characteristic of the NHK Japanese Time Use Survey is the survey’s continuity that allows time-series comparison of the data. For this reason, we have tried to make minimum changes to the questionnaire, but as people’s media use has become more diversified, some aspects of their activities have become difficult to handle, which gave rise to a need to modify the questionnaire for the next 2020 survey. To identify specific problems, we conducted focus group interviews, the result of which revealed the following three issues to be addressed: 1) assuming fragmented, on-and-off activities and simultaneous activities to design the best entry method, 2) categorizing communication on the internet, and 3) categorizing media use activities and re-examining the wording. There are possible two options for the modification. One is that we minimize the changes to the regular survey questionnaire as much as possible in order to secure the time-series comparison and conduct a separate agile survey focusing on media activities that cannot be figured out by the regular survey. The other is we prioritize grasping the current state of media use activities and redesign the entire survey. Which direction we should take is to be discussed from now on. In the process, we will need to revisit what aspects of Japanese lifestyle should be covered by the NHK’s time use survey and what can be grasped by the diary-style method in time use research. We plan to take the following steps: design a new questionnaire based on the results of the focus group interviews, conduct a time use survey on media use in October 2018, using the re-designed questionnaire, review the problematic points of the new questionnaire, and modify the questionnaire for the 2020 NHK Japanese Time Use Survey.