Prepared as part of the interdisciplinary Turko-Danish Fairytale Project, this paper contains descriptions of the core group of readers (600 18-year-old students) and the special groups of readers (each composed of approximately 50 subjects) who participated in the investigation of the collective versus the individual nature of the reader response to literature. After a brief discussion of the problems involved in choosing the subjects, the paper offers extensive data on various aspects of 1) the school systems of the core group students in Denmark and Turkey, (2) the background and education of the core group subjects, (3) differences in the classroom practices of the two countries, (4) teaching procedures used in each, and (5) major differences in the two educational systems as a whole. (FL)