The readership model used in the NADbank survey is based on respondent recall of title-specific readership over the seven days prior to the interview day. Operationally, this means that for the model to return a true measure, all newspapers in any measured market must have followed their regular weekly publishing schedule over the seven days prior to the day of the interview.

During the course of the fieldwork period, there are days when one or more papers in a market choose to modify their schedule and not publish on what would usually be a normal publishing day. The most common occurrence of this is on statutory holidays such as Victoria Day, Thanksgiving etc. In such instances, NADbank policy always has been to suspend interviewing for the balance of that week. When interviewing resumes the following Tuesday, there has once again been a normal weekly publishing schedule prior to the call.

Since the interviewing schedule also needs to be consistent nationally, markets where all newspapers publish on that day are also suspended. Accordingly, data collection time periods are consistent on all markets for any sample stream.