RESEARCH carried out by Bournemouth University and Hearst UK has received an overwhelmingly positive response.

Hearst UK unveiled research in partnership with Bournemouth University surrouding the reactions to its digital, social and print output alongside user experience.

The data showed that 82% of its audience immediately experienced an uplift in positive feeling following an individual interaction with Hearst UK content. 

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This and more findings were uncovered in the study, using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) methodology.

It is the first and largest study of its kind that captures in real time and real life how print, online and social media magazine content affects consumers positivity. 

ESM has been extensively used for measuring mood variations across situations and is often regarded as the ‘gold standard’ in measuring mood variation in positive psychology. Using ESM allowed feedback from participants in the study to be gathered in real time, before and immediately after engaging with Hearst UK content using an app-based methodology.  

The app-based methodology ‘pinged’ or prompted respondents at random times of the day, so that their feelings could be assessed when engaging in other activities compared to engaging with Hearst. 

This ‘pinged’ scenario also allowed for understanding the lasting effect of prior engagement with Hearst content.  It also removed any lab-tested or claimed response bias.     

Over a three-week period, 36,000 individual pieces of feedback and data was collected. 

Melanie Gray, head of the communication and journalism department at Bournemouth University said:  “We took a novel research approach to get ‘in the moment’ feedback from audiences engaging with media content. 

"This allowed readers to give their immediate reflections and offer an honest appraisal of the mood the articles and content created.

"We were really struck by the relationship between positive stories and positive feelings, which developed as a core thread of this research with a very large sample size. It allows us to say, with confidence, that positive storytelling can have positive benefits to your mood.”