As part of its regular quarterly omnibus survey of children, Brookfield, Connecticut-based Youth Research recently interviewed 300 boys and girls - one half of the group from 6 to 8 years old, one half 9 to 12 years old. Generally speaking, the study, which included questions on favorite snack foods, television shows, commercials, buzzwords, and movies, found little difference between the answers of boys and girls. The main differences were found in the responses to magazine preferences. For example, the older boys singled out Sports Illustrated for Kids as a favorite while the girls liked Teen Beat.

One of the most surprising findings of the study was that 6-12 year old kids listen to radio - perhaps more than marketers think they do, says Karen Forcade, president of Youth Research. "Most of the advertising on radio is for the older teens because teenagers are really into their radios. But we haven't given the younger children much credit that they listen to the radio or that they're aware of commercials. I think it's a completely untapped market."
 
The one-on-one interviews were conducted in mall locations. Kids were recruited through intercepts with their mothers. The interviews - which typically lasted about 8 minutes - were kept short to avoid taxing attention spans, Forcade says.

Kids' attention spans are one thing that some clients overlook when developing questionnaires for young respondents, Forcade says. "(The questionnaires) keep going through the approval process and people keep adding questions, 'Well let's ask this question, let's add that question, and why don't we talk about this also.' And so you end up keeping children 25 minutes in a central location study and they get kind of itchy.

"I'm a believer in keeping it simple and keeping it short. You can still ask the kids questions and get lots of good answers but you need to keep their interest up. And the kids are really helping you so you need to keep reinforcing that so they get some pride in what they're doing."

In general, clients don't have unreasonable expectations about what kind of information they can obtain from young consumers, Forcade says, but they sometimes try to meet all of their research objectives with just one study. "They really should go through a progression where everything goes in sequence - for example, first let's do this and tighten up these objectives and then fine tune it with this and go back in the second half and ask x amount of different children in the same market area. You have to take it step by step."

Despite the young ages of the respondents, Forcade says that she and her staff generally don' t have trouble getting kids to talk about their habits and preferences. When asking the questions, it is important to place them in a context the kids can understand, she says. "It involves getting them to focus on things, putting them in a situation so that they can identify with it. For example, when asking about their radio listening habits we said, 'What about when you're in Mom's car, do you listen to the radio?' rather than, 'How often do you listen to radio? More than once a day, once a day, more than once a week?' Those are kind of big questions for little children."

Not surprisingly, Forcade has found that television is definitely the dominant medium for kids. "It's becoming even more so. As much as their parents will allow them, they will watch. Often they would just as soon sit and be young couch potatoes. It's easier to sit and be entertained than to try to do it yourself."

Forcade says that when children are asked about ads they've seen, they often describe situations or scenes from the commercials but have trouble recalling the brands represented. The study also found little recall of the content of radio ads or the brands mentioned.

However, children are becoming more brand-conscious, Forcade says. In one area of the recent omnibus, a majority of children singled out Doritos by name as a favorite snack food. "That was quite a surprise. They didn't say 'chips' or 'potato chips,' they said 'Doritos.' I think kids are becoming a little more savvy. The commercials are being geared to children today whereas five or ten years ago they were much more general."