The Adults’ Media Lives study was originally set up in early 2005 to provide a small-scale, rich and detailed qualitative complement to Ofcom’s quantitative surveys of media literacy.
Whereas the surveys seek to quantify in a statistically robust way how many, and what kind of, people have different levels of media access, awareness, skills and understanding,
Adults’ Media Lives aims to provide a human face to the data. This 12-year ethnographic video study has tracked the evolution of individuals’ relationship with digital media – how it fits into their lives, what motivates them to adopt new technology and learn new skills, their usage habits, levels of understanding, issues and concerns about media.
Each participant is interviewed in-home and at length (each interview lasts around 90 minutes). This allows both for a full exploration of the relevant issues and for demonstration/observation of media use in-situ. Twelve waves of research have now been conducted; the first was in February 2005, with subsequent waves in October 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016. The most recent interviews were conducted between 7 October and 2 November 2016 by Mark Ellis, Tony Harbron and Tony Palmer of The Knowledge Agency. (One of our long-term participants was on a work placement in Australia at the time of this year’s fieldwork. Her interview was conducted via Skype.) The number of participants in the study is relatively small, but these people have been chosen carefully to reflect a broad cross-section of the UK population in terms of age, location (including all four nations), ethnicity and social circumstances. The unique methodology has allowed us to have extended discussions with these individuals, and to track their progress over time. Five of the 19 participants in the latest round of interviews have been part of the study since the start (2005), and seven more joined the study in 2006.
As the profile of the sample becomes – by definition – progressively older, we have regularly recruited new participants at the bottom end of the age range. The participants’ names have been changed to protect their anonymity.