Ever know a Nielsen/Arbitron family?

[installLSC]

I was reading a thread on this board about finding a Nielsen box at a local Goodwill. It reminded me that, considering how important these ratings are, that the actual number of actual Nielsen households is very small. Do you know anybody who was a Nielsen family, and what they told you about it? For that matter other TV/radio measuring studies are welcome.

 

[b-turner]

I was a Nielsen household for about 18 months. It was quite an experience. They came out and hooked everything up using my computer to communicate back to them. They were in regular contact via mail and by phone. They wanted to know if if purchased a new TV or computer. I was to click when guests were in my house. If anything strange happened, they called. For example, an old radio friend I had not talked to for years phone and I had been watching TV. I muted the TV and we talked about 2 or 3 hours catching on on the last decade or so. Te next day I get a call fro Nielsen asking me to explain what was going on while the TV sound was muted.

A woman knocked on my door asking if I could be considered as a Nielsen household. I had to qualify. It would seem, according to her, finding households was not an easy task.

They also paid you a small amount of money at various times ($25 to $50). I think you got $200 over 2 years. There were postcards to return asking various questions on potential purchases like buying a new car, how many soft drinks I had consumed in the past week or two and many other questions.

Everyone was very friendly and seemed to be interested in what made me 'tick' on TV viewing choices and understanding my buying habits to a lesser degree. By the way, Nielsen knew every time I watched a YouTube video and how long I viewed it.

I may be wrong, but I think I represented 3,400 TV viewers.

Overall I was rather impressed with their data gathering. It was sure more detailed than I suspected.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

I was a Nielsen household in a diary market during the July 2016. It was nothing like what b-turner described. No visit from a recruiter, and as I recall the payment was $1.
There were a couple of phone calls reminding me when the diary period began and ended, but no follow-up.

I got asked via postcard to do another diary at some later point, but I had resumed working in radio at that time which was against the guidelines so I did not.

 

[anotherguyTN]

I was a Nielsen household in a diary market during the July 2016. It was nothing like what b-turner described. No visit from a recruiter, and as I recall the payment was $1.
There were a couple of phone calls reminding me when the diary period began and ended, but no follow-up.

I got asked via postcard to do another diary at some later point, but I had resumed working in radio at that time which was against the guidelines so I did not.

My family had done a diary for a week or so in the 70's, , but not any more since then.

 

[davideduardo]

I was a Nielsen household in a diary market during the July 2016. It was nothing like what b-turner described. No visit from a recruiter, and as I recall the payment was $1.
There were a couple of phone calls reminding me when the diary period began and ended, but no follow-up.

I got asked via postcard to do another diary at some later point, but I had resumed working in radio at that time which was against the guidelines so I did not.

For radio, personal visits are only a technique in some hard to recruit groups in a few PPM markets. They don't do it with the diary, and I don't recall it ever being done with the diary since I started visiting the various Maryland facilities... Beltsville, Laurel and Columbia... almost exactly 50 years ago!

The recruit methods vary, and may include a pre-phonecall letter. But they are almost all done with the phone and mailings.

Follow-up for diary is all by phone, as it's just a one-week period for recruits.

The PPM has both mail and phone contacts to maintain compliance over the up to two year PPM panelist time with the survey.

Diary incentives vary with the difficulty in recruiting certain groups. It's still a very small amount that would not buy two coffee drinks at Starbucks.

The PPM households / dwelling units can get a load of incentives, but they are based on longer terms. And there are far fewer PPM participants as the panel is smaller than the diary total for a book, and the panel only turns over around 8% monthly.

I've been recruited twice for TV in the Palm Springs mini-metro. The initial contact was by letter, followed by a phone call where I claimed media affiliation (although in a different market). When I mentioned that the parent of the affiliation was a national TV web, they said, "thanks but no thanks" and courteously said they'd take me off the list.

 

[NoDakObserver]

I was a Nielsen household in a diary market during the July 2016. It was nothing like what b-turner described. No visit from a recruiter, and as I recall the payment was $1.
There were a couple of phone calls reminding me when the diary period began and ended, but no follow-up.

I got asked via postcard to do another diary at some later point, but I had resumed working in radio at that time which was against the guidelines so I did not.

You and b-turner are answering two different questions. He was part of the official Neilsen box system. You just did the diaries, which is all done through the mail or phone. I've done the diaries too. Two completely different things so I wouldn't expect them to be the same.

 

[gr8oldies]

I was part of a Nielsen TV family in the 1970s.