DENMARK


Denmark's Most Wanted:
(refrigerator door size)

Denmark's Least Wanted:
(paperback size)


Survey Notes

Initiated by the Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, and sponsored by the Danish newspaper Politiken, the present interview study has been performed by Vilstrup Research AS, Copenhagen. Its purpose is to supply the artists Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid with a statistically based overview of the art preferences of the Danish population, to be interpreted in a painting, and to supply statistical material for a sociological analysis of important aspects of the attitudes and preferences of the Danes to pictorial art.

A project of this kind was first realized in the United States in the winter of 1993-94. As a result of a co-operation of Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid with The Nation Institute, New York, a national telephone survey with 1,001 completed interviews was conducted by the research company Marttila & Kiley, Boston.

The present Danish survey is representing the same concept as that of the American study. However, many details are different. Most important is that a different approach is used in the general colour preference questions (Q 1.3-9) in order to secure that Danish respondents can have their preferences communicated correctly to artists and other report readers not familiar with the Danish language. Also, the list of artists known or unknown, liked or disliked (Q 4.2) has to reflect a Danish frame of reference.

In the late afternoons and early evenings of 23rd through 26th October, 1994, 505 telephone interviews were made, using a CATI version of the questionnaire which is inserted in the back of the present work document.

855 numbers of private telephone households were drawn in the most recent editions of regional telephone directories covering Denmark (not including Greenland and the Faroe Islands). 68 numbers were excluded for technical reasons (number closed or otherwise no longer in household use). The remaining 813 were called two or three times if necessary. 174 were not cooperative (21 %). 134 did not answer within the interview period (17 %). The 505 completed interviews represent a success rate of 62 %, which is normal at household level in Denmark.




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