Arbitron's 'Second Chance' for Diary Respondents

In the US, Arbitron is to offer a 'second chance' diary to respondents who have agreed to participate in a survey, but failed to return their diary. The move is an attempt to bolster response rates for hard to reach demographics.

The firm says that its testing program has already shown improvements in the number of young male, black and Hispanic respondents; and of those households that agreed to participate for a second time, 40% returned the diaries.

The company will also be offering an additional premium for each diary returned from households that include men aged 18-34.

'This is the best of both worlds for diary sample improvements,' said Ed Cohen, VP of Research Policy and Communication. 'Typically when you improve proportionality, response rates go down and vice versa. With the second chance diary system, we are able to improve both proportionality and response rates.'

VP of Diary Market Development Tom O'Sullivan said that the enhancements focus on improving sample representation for the hardest to reach demographics. 'We've seen success in promised incentives for the top ten markets and similar results are expected with the young male sample in the additional markets', he added.

In a bid to improve sample size and increase industry confidence, Arbitron last week launched an English/Spanish personal home page for PPM survey participants, where users can check their earned reward points, review their hour-by-hour use of PPM and share compliance tips with other PPM respondents (www.mrweb.com/drno/news8059.htm ).

Last month, O'Sullivan was appointed as 'Diary Czar' to create a customer-focused strategy that links enhancements to small-market ratings services with plans for the overall improvement of diary quality (www.mrweb.com/drno/news7953.htm ).

The firm is online at www.arbitron.com.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

• Arbitron Inc.
• All news