The Dewsbury Press has had a complaint against it regarding readership claims upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority.

An advert in The Press stated “Place your public notices in The Press and get it read by 94,585 readers* Ring … for further details.”

Small print at the bottom of the ad stated “*GA research”.

Yorkshire Weekly Newspaper Group, owners of the rival Dewsbury Reporter, challenged the claim “read by 94,585 readers”.

The ASA agreed that the Dewsury Press’s research was unlikely to be reliable in finding the number of readers per copy.

Free Press parent company Newspost Ltd told the ASA that the readership figure was based on their most recent Verified Free Distribution statement from March 2006 of 32,585 copies.

They said they had multiplied that number by a readers-per-copy figure of 2.92. They said, therefore, the number 94,585 in the ad was incorrect: it should have been 95,148.

They pointed out that the updated audits from September 2006 showed their VFD figure had dropped to 32,049 copies, which meant the new readership figure was 93,583; they said they would change their ads accordingly.

Newspost said the 2.92 readers-per-copy figure was based on market research carried out for them early in 2006 by GJ Associates.

The market research sent to the ASA by Newspost consisted of 360 interviews with people selected from their telephone backcheck lists, which were used to verify their doorstep distribution.

A positive response for readers per copy was attributed to each reader The Press had in the respondents household – or to a person who directly received the paper from the respondent.

The ASA’s assessment said: “We considered that asking the question ‘How many people in your household, or friends/family that you pass the newspaper onto, read any part of The Press?’ was unlikely to provide a reliable method of calculating the number of readers per copy of a newspaper, and in turn the total readership of the newspaper, and was likely to generate speculative replies, because it would be difficult for a respondent to give a definitive response about whether or not another person read a paper.

“We also considered that offering a most likely option as an answer to some questions in the survey was likely to result in inaccurate data, especially if interviewees were unsure of exact numbers and were asked to guess how many people in their household, or how many people they passed the paper on to, read it.

“We noted the Joint Industry Committee for Regional Press Research, the industry body that provided readership data for advertisers and advertising agencies, listed a figure of 1.5 readers per copy for The Press (Dewsbury) and an average issue readership of 49,308.”