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Home > Patron Survey (2003) Index page > Section 4, Data Analysis

NLS: That All May Read

3. Methodology 5. Discussion

4.0 Data Analysis

The following chapter is presented in two parts:

• Part I. Patrons’ Background Characteristics and Technology Use
• Part II. Subscribers’ Experiences with the Talking Book Service and Playback Machines.

Part I. Patrons’ Background Characteristics and Technology Use

This section sets the stage for the rest of the report. Below, we describe subscribers’

• demographic characteristics
• disability and health characteristics
• use of technology in everyday life

These factors provide a context for understanding subscribers’ experiences with their current playback machines, as well as their preferences and needs regarding the forthcoming digital equipment.

I-A. Demographic characteristics (Tables 4-1 and 4-2)

In two respects--educational attainment and type of community--NLS patrons are a varied group. Their highest grade or degree runs the gamut from 11 or fewer years of formal education to graduate school. Patrons are only slightly less likely to be living in a rural community or small town than in a suburb or city.

In other respects, however, NLS patrons are more demographically homogeneous. Overwhelmingly, respondents are non-Hispanic Whites whose native language is English. Most are unemployed and have a modest household income of $39,000 or less for 2002. This demographic profile characterizes all age groups. As we explain below, however, it especially characterizes retirement-age subscribers; the young and middle-aged adults are somewhat more diverse.

As one would expect, for example, nearly all retirement-age respondents are unemployed (98%). The modest incomes typical of the sample as a whole are especially concentrated among the oldest subscribers. Ninety percent who are 85 or older had a household income of $39,000 or below, and more than half reported an income of less than $20,000 (59% compared to from 35 to 41% of younger respondents).

Although a clear majority of young adults also have a modest income and are unemployed, a substantial minority work full- or part-time. The youngest patrons are the most likely to have a job (38% compared to 16% of respondents between the ages of 40 and 64), and they are the only age group that is predominantly male. Working-age subscribers—especially the youngest—also are somewhat more racially and ethnically diverse than retirement-age subscribers are. Between 83% and 92% of subscribers ages 40 or older are white, for instance, compared to only 71% of patrons who are 18 to 39 years old. In each successively younger age group, Hispanics and members of racial minority groups (except American Indians) are more numerous.

I-B. Disability and health (Table 4-3)

The great majority of subscribers (74%) are blind or visually impaired. Slightly more than half of all subscribers (54%) reported serious difficulty seeing, and 20% are totally blind or have light perception only. Adult onset, usually at age 40 or later, is the rule. The most common experience is serious vision loss that accompanies old age; 40% of all blind or visually impaired patrons, and most patrons who are of retirement age, did not have serious difficulty seeing until they were 65 or older.

Although a few retirement-age patrons have been visually impaired for most of their lives, childhood onset is the rule in the youngest age group. More than half of blind or visually impaired respondents who are 18 to 39 years old first experienced serious vision loss at age five or before. Most of the rest developed vision problems before turning 20.

Physical problems that interfere with reading are relatively rare, both in general (13% of all respondents) and in each age group (9% to 16%). Only 3% of all subscribers, moreover, are physically impaired only; most physically impaired subscribers also have a learning disability or (much more often) are blind or visually impaired (77%, not shown).

Learning problems that interfere with reading are even rarer than physical problems (10%). Having a learning disability is strongly age-related. One-third of the youngest patrons reported a learning disability compared to just 2% to 10% of patrons in the three older groups.

Both demographically and with respect to disability, the youngest patrons are a somewhat anomalous group. They are the only age group in which males predominate. As we have seen, patrons who are 18 to 39 years old are more likely to be employed and to belong to a racial or ethnic minority group than older patrons are, and their experience with disability is different. More of the youngest patrons have a learning disability, and most with a visual or physical impairment developed it before they were old enough to start first grade. This pattern presents a sharp contrast to the experience of older respondents, especially in the retirement-age groups, most of whom did not have difficulty reading until relatively late in life.

A sharp contrast between the young adults and everyone else also applies to the state of subscribers’ general health. Many more young adults than older adults reported being in excellent or very good health (69% compared to from 22% to 39%). Their good health (and the opportunity to acquire adaptive skills at an early age) might help to explain why the 18 to 39 year-olds are more likely to be employed than patrons in what are normally the peak working years of 40 to 64.

The fact that many subscribers over 40 cannot claim excellent or very good health is not necessarily to say they are frail. Few people in any age group reported poor health. Nor can one assume that precarious health becomes more common in each successively older group. The oldest subscribers report being in better health than do subscribers in their later working years or early old age. More of the oldest subscribers characterized their general health as excellent or very good (39% compared to 22% to 32%), and fewer reported that their health was only fair or poor (33% compared to 41% to 45%). Although these findings might seem anomalous, they probably are not. People who reach late old age are, by definition, survivors; they have avoided, delayed, or controlled the chronic health problems that might have taken their lives at a younger age. Many of the subscribers who are 40 to 84 and in precarious health, quite likely, will not live to the age of 85.

I-C. Technology Use (Tables 4-4 and 4-4-b)

Nearly all subscribers use at least one high-tech device that is commonplace in the broader American population. Most, for instance, use a remote control and dial the telephone themselves. A clear majority insert batteries into household devices and operate a CD player, although sometimes with difficulty. Among respondents who operate a CD player, 18% have trouble handling the CDs (not shown in the table). Between one-fourth and one-third of subscribers make purchases with a debit card and use a bank card at an ATM machine.

The use of high-tech adaptive devices, computers, and the internet is less widespread but still significant. The majority of subscribers use a magnifier ^[footnote], and nearly 40% use more sophisticated adaptive devices. Very few respondents use a braille device. Use of scanners, CCTVs, screen readers, and screen magnification software ranges from 11% to only 17% of all respondents.

Almost half of subscribers have heard of synthetic speech, but only about one-third have actually used it. As one would expect, the principal users of synthetic speech are blind or visually impaired (76% of users, not shown). Some people who are not blind or visually impaired (at least not as defined in this study), however, also use it (24%, not shown). This fact, and the predominance of blind or visually impaired people in the sample, helps to explain why the use of synthetic speech is no more common among blind or visually impaired subscribers than it is among subscribers in general (33% and 32% respectively, Table 4-4). 

Subscribers vary in how much they rely on synthetic speech. People who listen to synthetic speech, and blind or visually impaired subscribers in particular, are almost evenly divided between those who listen to it often and those who listen only occasionally or rarely (Table 4-4).

The potential market for synthetic speech publications is relatively small but non-trivial (Table 4-4-a). This market, moreover, is larger for some types of publications than for others. More subscribers are willing to listen to short documents like articles and newsletters in synthetic speech than are willing to listen to books. Willingness to listen to all types of publications in synthetic speech, however, is likely to increase as awareness of the technology grows and as the quality of the speech improves. Among subscribers who have heard of synthetic speech, approximately two-thirds are willing to listen to articles and newsletters, and half are willing to listen to books.

Another development that might increase interest in synthetic speech is more widespread computer use. Only one-third of subscribers use a computer, most often at home. Most that use a computer also use the internet. Almost as many home internet users have a high-speed connection as have the slower dial-up service.^[footnote]

The reasons subscribers volunteered for not using a computer (not shown) point to three major barriers: (1) low income, (2) inaccessibility to people with disabilities, and (3) generational issues. Although only 8% of non-users said that computers are too expensive, 29% reported having no access to a computer; presumably lower prices (or more disposable income) would enable many of these people to buy a computer. Consistent with this argument, computer use is statistically a function of income; as household income increases, so does computer use (d=.21, p equal to or less than .01; Table 4-4). High-income subscribers are almost three times more likely than low-income subscribers to use a computer (62% of subscribers with a household income of $60,000 or more vs. 22% of those whose household income is less than $20,000, not shown). A relatively high income also appears to promote internet use, awareness of synthetic speech, and the use of high-tech adaptive devices ^[footnote]

Another common reason for not using a computer is inaccessibility to people with disabilities (30% of non-users).  Inaccessibility probably also underlies many of the health problems (e.g., arthritis) that 14% of non-users gave as a reason for not using a computer.

Generational barriers are implicit in many of the reasons subscribers gave for not using a computer. These reasons include not knowing how to use a computer (29% of non-users), feeling too old (17%), the belief that computers are too complicated (13%) or too much trouble (8%), lack of interest (15%) or need (6%), and fear of computers or technology more generally (3%).

Together, these reasons suggest a lack of exposure, or only a brief and unsatisfactory exposure, to computers and what computers can do.

Generational issues might be an even greater hindrance to computer use than economic barriers are. Age (which in the present context indicates generation, not age per se) influences computer and internet use more strongly than household income does (Table 4-4). The relationship between age and technology use emerges even more starkly when one compares the four age groups (Table 4-4-b). Three-fourths of young adults use a computer and the internet, as do approximately half of subscribers in the 40 to 64 age group (which includes most of the Baby Boom generation and people born during World War II). After age 64—that is, among people born before the start of the Second World War—computer use and internet use both drop sharply. This general pattern also applies to having heard of synthetic speech and to the use of all high-tech adaptive devices except for CCTVs (scanners, screen readers, braille devices and, to a lesser extent, screen magnification software). To varying degrees, much higher use among younger subscribers than among older ones also applies to mainstream high-tech devices. In the oldest age group, there are only three such devices that more than half of subscribers use: a remote control, the telephone (i.e., dialing), and batteries (i.e., inserting) (59% to 76%, Table 4-4-b).  

Part II: Subscribers’ Experiences with the Talking Book Service and Playback Machine

Part II covers two broad aspects of subscribers’ experiences with the Talking Book service and playback machine. The first section describes utilization of the Talking Book service. Topics include ordering, sources of playback equipment and reading materials, listening habits, returning tapes, and canceling the service. The second section concerns playback machine operation. Topics include usefulness of features, using the cassettes and machine controls, and what subscribers would change about the playback machine.

• II-A. Utilization of the Talking Book Service
  • Ordering
  • Sources of Playback Equipment and Reading Material
  • Listening Habits
  • Returning Tapes
  • Canceling the Service
• II-B. Operating the Playback Machine
  • Usefulness of Features
  • Using the Cassettes and Machine Controls
  • What Subscribers Would Change About the Playback Machine

II-A. Utilization of the Talking Book Service (Tables 4-5 to 4-8)

Ordering

Nearly all respondents have ordered at least one book or magazine since the beginning of the year (Table 4-5). Most, in addition, have ordered one or more books specifically.

Reflecting the typically late onset of serious vision loss, subscribers have been using the service for an average (median) of only five years. That is, the sample is evenly divided between people who have subscribed for five years or less and people who have subscribed for five years or more. Length of utilization, however, varies widely, from less than one year (4%) to 59 years (<1%, not shown). Twenty-nine percent have used the service for two years or less, but 12% have done so for 20 years or longer (not shown). Nearly half of subscribers are heavy orderers who have received more than twenty books since the beginning of the year.

Patterns of ordering are similar across age groups, with two exceptions. The first exception involves the oldest subscribers, who have received the most books since the beginning of 2003. Almost two-thirds of respondents in the 85+ age group have received more than twenty books; no more than half of younger respondents have done so (Table 4-5). The second exception to the similarity in receipt of materials across age groups applies to the youngest subscribers. Although respondents between the age of 18 and 39 tend to have used the service for somewhat longer than others have (an average of seven years vs. five years), they are less likely to have received books since the beginning of 2003 (64% vs. 82% to 88% of people in the older age groups).

The extent to which these age-specific receipt patterns apply to the broader subscriber population, however, is unclear. The relationship between having received books in 2003 and age is statistically significant, but the other relationships shown in Table 4-5 are not.

Sources of playback equipment and reading material

Across age groups, NLS is the dominant source of playback equipment. Almost all of the subscribers (97%) have an NLS machine. Nevertheless, a substantial minority have availed themselves of alternatives; one-third obtained a playback machine from another source, usually in addition to the equipment they received from NLS.

The NLS machine appears to be the one that subscribers prefer to use. Among those who obtained equipment from another source, a clear majority, 76%, use the NLS machine more often than their other machine. Although a majority of respondents in all age groups primarily use their NLS equipment, usage patterns vary by age. More of the older subscribers (ages 65 and over) than younger subscribers favor the NLS equipment, while more younger subscribers than older subscribers favor their other machine. 

Patterns of obtaining books from alternative sources are very similar to the patterns of using non-NLS playback equipment. Although most subscribers receive books from their Talking Book library exclusively, slightly more than one-third, especially subscribers under age 65, obtain books from other sources. More often than not, the source is another organization (28% of all respondents); far fewer listen to a radio reading service, scan books into a computer, or use a dial-in newspaper service.

Consistent with many respondents’ limited economic resources, the single most common organizational source of books (apart from NLS) is a public library (13% of all respondents, not shown). Approximately half that many have bought commercial audio books at a store or have ordered from Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic. Only six people have obtained books from a website (e.g., Bookshare.org or Audible.com).

Listening habits

Subscribers tend to be heavy readers (Table 4-7). Two-thirds listen to books or magazines every day or almost every day. Few listen sporadically, less than once a week, and most of these light readers listen at least once a month (not shown).

Whether by choice or necessity, subscribers also tend to be stationary readers. When listening at home, the majority always have their playback machine set up in the same place. Similarly, the majority rarely or never listen to books or magazines when they are away from home. Nevertheless, a substantial minority of subscribers are more mobile. Almost one-third move their machine from one location to another within the home, and more than that listen to books or magazines when away from home at least on occasion. Some subscribers’ need for mobility no doubt explains why approximately half report using their player on battery power at least sometimes.

Frequency of listening and mobility are both age-related. Intermittent readers are concentrated among the youngest subscribers. The most mobile readers are under the age of 65. Subscribers in the two younger groups are more likely than retirement-age subscribers to move their player from one place to another when listening at home, and they also are more likely to listen when away from home. Consistent with their greater mobility, more younger subscribers than older subscribers often use their player on battery power.

Returning tapes

For most subscribers, returning tapes to their Talking Book Library is not a problem. Three-fourths said doing so is very easy, and for most of the rest it is somewhat easy (Table 4-8). Subscribers apparently experience more difficulty, however, than these findings suggest. Although more than half usually return the tapes themselves, 42% either return the tapes with help or someone returns the tapes for them.

As it turns out, returning the tapes is usually very easy for subscribers who do it themselves (85%, not shown). It is also very easy, however, for many who return tapes with help or have someone do it for them (61%, not shown). Some subscribers who say returning tapes is very easy, then, might find it so because they have help.

Return problems do not primarily involve the mechanics of re-packaging the tapes. When we asked subscribers who reported difficulty what made returning tapes hard, very few mentioned things like putting tapes into their containers, closing and latching the containers, figuring out which way the address card goes, actually turning the address card over, or putting the tapes into the mailbox (n = 2 – 8). More often, the problem is logistics: subscribers can’t get to a mailbox (n = 24). Quite likely, this problem is more widespread and helps to explain why many people, including some who say returning tapes is easy, need help.

Consistent with this argument, blind or visually impaired subscribers are less likely than other subscribers to say that returning tapes is very easy, as Table 4-8 shows. Subscribers who live in a rural or farming community, small town, or suburb are less likely than city-dwellers to return tapes themselves. These relationships are not very strong, but they are statistically significant, and they make sense. Blind or visually impaired people will have a logistical problem, for instance, if they do not live within walking distance of a mailbox and cannot drive. People who live in a city are likely to have one or more mailboxes close at hand, but those who live elsewhere might not. 

Canceling the service

Very few subscribers (8%, not shown) have ever considered canceling their Talking Book service. Those who have are spread across all four age groups.

Subscribers’ reasons for considering cancellation reflect their own needs and life circumstances more than dissatisfaction with the Talking Book program. The four most common reasons are that the subscriber hadn’t been using the service, no longer needs the service, is too busy, and various other considerations having to do with the individual’s specific circumstances. A few subscribers said they were not well enough to use the service. Altogether, respondent-based considerations make up almost two-thirds of the reasons subscribers provided for considering cancellation. The only other reasons that more than one or two people offered were that others "might need the service more than I" (n=7) and that the playback machine is difficult to use (n=6).

II-B. Operating the Playback Machine

For most subscribers, the Talking Book playback machine is very easy to use (76%, not shown), and it is somewhat easy to use for most of the rest (17%, not shown).^[Footnote] And for most subscribers, learning how to use the device was uneventful; 88% reported having had no problems.

Usefulness of features

Some of the player’s features no doubt contribute to ease of use (Table 4-9). Approximately two-thirds of subscribers said that the raised symbols on some keys are very or somewhat useful, and half can read the player’s large print labels. Reading the large print labels on the cassettes or containers, in addition, is the most common way of telling one cassette from another (41%, not shown); 10% of subscribers rely on the cassette’s braille label (not shown).^[Footnote]

Another useful visual aid is strong contrast between light and dark, which almost three out of four subscribers find at least somewhat useful. Most people who find strong contrast useful prefer a dark object on a light background. Some, however, either prefer a light object on a dark background or find both types of contrast equally useful.

More than half of subscribers are familiar with some tapes’ tone indexing feature. People who know about this feature tend to use it; three-fourths of these subscribers have used tones to find parts of a book or magazine.

These findings underline the complexity of designing a playback machine for people with varied needs. There is no one feature that everyone finds useful. Even among subscribers who value a given feature, degree of usefulness varies. Similarly, subscribers vary in the type of contrast that is most useful to them. If NLS can employ only one type of contrast, some subscribers’ needs for contrast inevitably will remain unmet. 

Using the cassettes and machine controls

The amount of difficulty subscribers have in using the cassettes and machine controls reflects on both the machine’s user-friendliness and subscribers’ physical and cognitive capabilities. So does subscribers’ need for help or self-sufficiency in various aspects of operating the equipment. For the most part, subscribers’ reports reflect well on the Talking Book playback machine and their own competencies.

Day-to-day, the vast majority of subscribers are self-sufficient; 90% usually operate the machine to play tapes by themselves (Table 4-10). When they have a problem with the machine, subscribers are far more likely to fix the problem themselves than to get help from others.

A more nuanced picture emerges, however, when we consider subscribers’ experiences learning how to use the machine. Although most subscribers said they had had no problems learning, as we reported previously, only half learned entirely on their own (Table 4-10). Why half of subscribers needed help is unclear. The available data cannot tell us whether the problem lies in the instructions that came with the machine, features or controls that could have been more self-explanatory than they were, a general learning style that relies heavily on help-seeking (i.e., whether one needs help on objective grounds or not), or some subscribers’ cognitive limitations.

Whatever the reason, understanding certain aspects of machine operation is less likely to be a trouble-free experience than handling the tapes or manipulating the controls (Table 4-11). Between 76% and 85% of subscribers reported having no trouble finding the right control, figuring out what each control does, and understanding how to use the side selector switch. Even more subscribers, however, have had no trouble pushing the buttons hard enough, moving the sliders, inserting and removing the tape from the tape compartment, and turning the tape over (91% - 96%).  Although there is little evidence that subscribers have trouble physically manipulating the controls or the tapes themselves, a few do have problems with the containers the tapes come in. Between 13% and 14% have some difficulty opening the latches and removing the tape from its container. 

What subscribers would change about the playback machine

We have two types of information about improvements to the playback machine that subscribers would value most. The first type is qualitative data, based on a question that subscribers answered in their own words: “If there were just one thing you could change about your cassette player, what would that be?” Open-ended questions like this one elicit top-of-mind concerns. The second type of data measures the importance that subscribers attach to eleven specific characteristics. These ratings identify improvements with the broadest appeal.

Nearly half of subscribers apparently have no top-of-mind concerns; 45% (not shown) either don’t know what they would change or would change nothing. Among subscribers who offered suggestions, making the machine smaller or lighter is, by far, the highest priority. Eighty-eight people want a smaller or lighter machine, which is the only concern that more than sixteen people volunteered (Table 4-12). When we asked subscribers how important each of eleven possible improvements are to them, the resulting ratings underscore the importance of size and weight (Table 4-13). We need an intro to Table 4-13 here.  What do you mean by “ratings data”?  Explain how 4-13 differs from 4-12.)These two characteristics received the third- and fourth-largest number of “very important” ratings.

There are two other characteristics, however, that even (slightly) more subscribers consider very important—the ability to find one’s place after having fallen asleep and better sound quality than now at normal speed. Slightly more than half of subscribers consider these characteristics to be very important. Improved sound quality, however, has the broadest appeal in this sense: it is the characteristic subscribers are least likely to consider unimportant (19% compared to 27% - 49% for the other characteristics).

Most of the remaining characteristics we asked about are very important to more than 40% of subscribers. They include the ability to bookmark the place one wants to return to, not having to turn the tape over or use a side selector switch, getting books quickly, the ability to change the reading speed without changing the pitch, and the ability to move around easily from one part of the book to another.

The characteristics that the fewest subscribers consider very important are a setting to skip automatically over parts of a book and the ability to have words spelled (both 32%). It might be premature to conclude, however, that these two features are unimportant. Their appeal, admittedly somewhat limited now, seems likely to grow. Both features have significantly more appeal to younger subscribers than to older ones (Table 4-14). The starkest contrast is between the youngest and oldest respondents.

3. Methodology 5. Discussion

[Footnote - Magnifiers]
One might have expected use of magnifiers to be more common among blind and visually impaired people than it is and less common than shown among subscribers in general. One explanation is that many people with “over-forty eyes” no doubt use a magnifier despite the fact that their vision problems aren’t serious enough to qualify as visual impairment as defined in this study. In addition, 77% of visually impaired subscribers who have some useful vision do use a magnifier. Why the remaining 23% do not is unclear. Possibilities include vision loss that magnification might not help (e.g., pathologies that affect mainly peripheral vision, very severe vision loss that stops just short of total blindness), a perceived or real inability to afford a magnifier strong enough to be helpful, and adaptive strategies that do not involve sight at all (including discontinuing activities that one previously performed). 

Interestingly enough, 16% of subscribers who described themselves as totally blind use a magnifier. Some of these respondents might simply define blindness or lack of useful vision more broadly than blindness professionals do.

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[Footnote - Internet]
Use of computers, access to the internet, and high-speed internet connections are most common among subscribers who live in a suburb or city. For example, 40% of suburbanites and city-dwellers use a computer compared to 26% of subscribers who live in a rural community or small town (not shown). Among internet users, high-speed connections are more than twice as common among suburbanites and city-dwellers (54% compared to 20% of subscribers living in a rural community or small town, not shown). These findings should be interpreted cautiously, however. The relationships might be spurious, that is, attributable to other factors, such as age or income, that tend to be associated both with technology use and type of community. 

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[Footnote - Income]
The relationships between income and technology use cannot be explained away by education, which tends to go hand-in-hand with income level. That is, it is higher-income subscribers’ ability to afford technology, and not just an education-based receptiveness to technology, that accounts for the relationships between income and use of high-tech devices. As Table 4-4 shows, income is more strongly associated than education is with computer use, internet use, having heard of synthetic speech, and the use of high-tech adaptive devices.

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[Footnote - Ease of use]
Whether or not ease of use is age-related is unclear. Somewhat fewer retirement-age subscribers said their playback machine is very easy to use than subscribers in the two younger age groups (70% and 74% compared to 81% and 83%). This relationship, however, only approaches statistical significance (p = .06). There is no relationship between age and having had problems learning how to use the machine.

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[Footnote - Indentifying cassettes]
Other strategies for telling one cassette from another include listening to the tape (28%), someone tells me (23.5%), and keeping tapes in the boxes they came in (11.3%).

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3. Methodology 5. Discussion

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Posted on 2006-05-30