Evaluating VALS

VALSä  is an enormously useful tool for public radio. It’s our chief source of psychological information about our listeners, and the most comprehensive system we have that details their values and interests.

VALS is part of public radio’s two major audience research projects – AUDIENCE 88  and AUDIENCE 98^®  . For most in the industry, these two studies have been the only means of accessing VALS – an expensive product that most stations can’t afford.

In that way, VALS is analogous to the Arbitron data that were also, at one time, priced beyond the reach of public radio. Not until CPB and later the Radio Research Consortium brokered an affordable deal with Arbitron did public radio know if anyone was listening, much less whom.

Though some once thought otherwise, public radio could not have flourished without Arbitron information. Unless we know how we’re doing in the most basic way – who’s listening – we can’t possibly begin to understand how to improve our service.

Yet Arbitron’s ratings were invented to sell advertising for its main clients – buyers and sellers of commercial radio time. Public radio’s business is public service.

That’s why many in our industry look at Arbitron data through a public service lens, using concepts like "loyalty" that appear only in tools created specifically for public radio. Many would agree that the creation of these tools was as important a development for the industry as the Arbitron deal itself.

Public radio could benefit in the same way from specific public radio applications of VALS, a sales product also created for commercial clients.

Unlike Arbitron, VALS doesn’t gather new information every quarter. It’s a system of concepts that doesn’t change much over time. Through AUDIENCE 98, CPB is making the current VALS system available to public radio. And AUDIENCE 98, through its findings about VALS and our listeners, already supplies the public radio lens.

Today our industry has a powerful database, ripe with possibilities for VALS-based public radio applications. Though the VALS vendor would gladly sell its array of VALS-based products to us, public radio is too small a market for it to create the special tools that could serve us best. For example:

• Creating and testing a variety of targeted VALS-derived fundraising messages that not only raise money but also reduce pledge drive damage.

• Testing air personalities for their appeal to our dominant VALS listener types.

• Assessing new program concepts in the same way before investing in them.

I can hear producers yelping from here: Garrison Keillor would never have happened! Car Talk wouldn’t exist!

But my long experience with program development, my study of VALS theory, and my familiarity with AUDIENCE 98’s data tell me otherwise.

I believe that as a public service, public radio’s challenge is to attract significant public support for an intellectually honest, commercially uninfluenced programming product. It’s a much trickier business than General Motors’ or Nike’s. That’s why commercial VALS products just won’t do.

And that’s also why leaving the powerful field of human psychology undeveloped as a resource for programming and fundraising decisions simply doesn’t make sense.

Of all the possibilities for further research that AUDIENCE 98 has raised, applications based on our listeners’ values and interests seem to hold the most promise.

We’re an industry of highly educated, values-driven professionals who rely on the support of highly educated, values-driven people. But we were too dumb to invest further in VALS after AUDIENCE 88, and we missed out on its many possible benefits.

In 10 years our listeners have earned graduate degrees by the millions. But have we gotten any smarter?

– Leslie Peters
AUDIENCE 98 Core Team

 

Audience Research Analysis
Copyright © ARA and CPB.  All rights reserved.
Revised: September 01, 2000 12:38 PM.