Summary of Recommendations

Report for the Canadian Newspaper Association (CNA), August 1995
Goldfarb Consultant
Republished with permission

The objective of this research is to help newspaper publishers, editors, writers and reporters better understand how well the needs, interests and concerns of the many different visible minorities in Canada are being served by daily newspapers today. In specific, the research is designed to assess whether daily newspapers have a readership problem among visible minorities and, if so:

• What factors may be contributing to this.
• What methods newspapers might use to address any problems and boost readership among visible minorities, one of the fastest growing segments of the population.

The specific objectives were to assess and evaluate:

• The attitudes of respondents towards Canada and the communities in which they live.
• The relative importance of daily newspapers to respondents with respect to other forms of media.
• The perceived strengths and weaknesses of daily newspapers from the respondents viewpoint .
• The manner in which daily newspapers treat visible minorities.
• The image which the respondents have of daily newspapers.
• The advice which respondents may have for the publishers of daily newspapers.

Six focus group sessions were conducted between July 17th and July 20th, 1995. The following group sessions were
conducted:

Vancouver, July 17

• 1 Group of Chinese
• 1 Group of South Asians

Hamilton, July 19

• 1 Group of Whites
• 1 Group of Mixed Non-Whites

Toronto, July 20

• 1 Group of Muslims
• 1 Group of Blacks

In total 65 individuals participated in the six focus groups. There was an even split of males and females and a wide range of occupations as demonstrated by the following list:

The groups varied slightly in terms of age, but were generally recruited so that one-half of respondents were between 18 and 35, and the other half were over 35. Of this latter group, the majority were under 50. Two-thirds of the visible minority groups recruited were first-generation Canadians, while one-third were second or later generation Canadians. One-half of all respondents were regular newspaper readers, while the remaining half were split equally between those who read the daily newspaper occasionally or almost never.

All respondents indicated that they could read English.

During each focus group session, a questionnaire was completed by each respondent. The questionnaire and the summary results for the visible minority respondents are included in Appendix A. The results for the questions are included in the appropriate detailed findings section.

• Note: It should be cautioned that these results are from a sample size of 53 individuals. While valid conclusions can be drawn from the results of a group of this size, the results are not statistically reliable. However the results do provide directional insights into the attitudes of these respondents. The members of the white group in Hamilton also completed the same questionnaire and in the body of the report, we have indicated those issues where their attitudes and responses appear to be substantially different from those of the visible minority respondents. Again some caution should be exercised in using this information because of the small sample sizes.

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