Measuring Motivations for Media Exposure: A Thesis

The present article discusses the problem of separating the motivation conceptempirically from other relevant concepts in research on mass media audiences.For about half a century, audience researchers use questionnaire items with adistinct format as measurements of motivations for media exposure. It isargued that these motivation items grammatically reflect the nature of themotivation concept as a theoretically intermediate variable between behaviourand its social or mental background, thus constituting the most plausibleindicators of the concept. However, it is also argued that these questionnaireitems are double-barrelled and that any measurement of motivations based onthe items can largely be considered an ambiguous mixture of behaviour and itssocial or mental origin. A study is presented that provides empirical support for this position.