What are you like? Usually when adults say that to teenagers, at school or at home, it's just a rhetorical question, and not a very friendly one either. However, there are organisations out there that regard you as important present-day or future customers, and they really want to understand your likes and dislikes, your habits and hopes.

Media companies are no exception. So when Aine Maguire, marketing manager at The Irish Times, was completing a marketing management programme at the Irish Management Institute, she decided to try to find out more about teenagers' attitudes and interests.

She devised a survey questionnaire which took about a half-hour to complete, and 770 of last year's Transition Year students, from all over Ireland, obliged her with their responses. Her colleague Sean McCrave did the detailed analysis that turned the raw data into tables and numbers like those you see on this page. Some of the questions and answers were directly relevant to The Irish Times - like the one that showed The Irish Times to be the most popular broadsheet newspaper among the teens, even though more of them said their parents read the Irish In- dependent. (Both newspapers trailed behind the tabloids and local newspapers among teenagers.)

But the survey yielded many other interesting findings about teenagers, about much more than their media habits. And sometimes, Maguire explains, it's all about how you ask the question.

"For example, for a questionnaire that was going to be answered in the classroom, we didn't think it was appropriate to ask: `Do you drink?' " Maguire explains. Instead, pub attendance was included in a section that included questions on other social activities. And it turns out that nearly three-quarters of these 15- and 16-year-olds said they visited a pub at least once a month. The percentage rose to 86 per cent for the students from the Connacht-Ulster region.

While only a fifth of respondents attend concerts with any regularity, three-quarters get out to the pictures at least once a month, and discos get a similar turnout. How late do such activities keep you out? The responses on that were a bit sketchy, but they suggest being out after 10 p.m. on a "school night" is not unusual, and after midnight is fairly common on a non-school night, though it seems the double standard is alive and well: girls are expected in a bit earlier than boys.

There's significant difference between the sexes on Internet use, too. About 30 per cent of boys said they spent an hour or more every day online, compared to only 15 per cent of girls. Nearly half the girls surveyed said they spent less than an hour every week online. More of the students had access to the Internet in school than at home. Since the survey was conducted last year, it's likely that all these surfing figures would be higher now, given the fast growth of the online world.

If that's true, and what with all the pubs, pictures and discos, it probably means even less time for old-fashioned reading. The pie chart shows how little time is spent reading magazines, in spite of the huge number of titles that are aimed at teen readers.

The situation for book-reading is even "worse" (assuming book-reading is a good thing). Fully a third of the students surveyed said they read one book or less every year. A disproportionate number of these non-readers were boys from Munster.

Being Transition Year students, these teens said they were spending very little time studying. Instead, the vast majority watch TV and listen to the radio every day; more than half the respondents said they performed each activity for at least two hours daily.

Pop/chart music was, unsurprisingly, the popular favourite for listening. Boys were more likely than girls to name rock as a preferred genre, girls much more likely than boys to cite soul.

On the telly, the teens liked to watch films, US comedy and music, boys and girls alike. Differences set in over soaps, sport and talk shows; boys were also more likely to name "UK comedy" as among their favourites types of programme.

Market researchers like to ask people about their attitudes as well as their behaviour, and The Irish Times was no exception. The way this survey went about it was to offer a long list of statements and ask students to check boxes to indicate whether they agreed or disagreed.

With such questions, you can't always be sure whether the attitudes being checked off by respondents are real or aspirational - that is, whether (even on an anonymous survey) we tend to agree with the statements that we think sound most correct and high-minded, rather than the ones we really feel.

A good example in this case is smoking. Nearly 70 per cent of students disagreed with the statement that "smoking is trendy and fashionable". Which is nice, but it doesn't explain the large and growing numbers of teen smokers.

Still, the responses in this section are interesting. A narrow majority of students disagreed that cannabis should be legalised and that "marriage is an out-dated institution". (However, sex before marriage was largely seen as okay.) There was 65 per cent agreement with the statement that "people should legally be allowed to drink at 16".

Going to the cinema and keeping up with fashion were deemed to be positive and popular, as was the idea of continuous assessment in school rather than final exams.

And the final good news: only 23 per cent of respondents disagreed with the statement "Transition Year is a positive experience". But were their teachers reading over their shoulders?