Arbitron Releases Summer 2003 Survey Response Rates.
October 13, 2003
Arbitron Inc. has released the Summer 2003 Survey Response Rates.
The company’s continuing efforts to stem the ongoing decline in response rates for the top ten markets have resulted in a 0.6 percent increase from 27.3 to 27.9 in Summer 2003. The average Metro return rate has increased significantly by 2.4 percentage points to 52.7 percent from 50.3 in Summer 2002.
Across all 97 continuously measured markets, response rates declined 1.8 percentage points from 32.6 percent in Summer 2002 to 30.8 percent in Summer 2003. The average Metro consent rate declined 2.8 points from 59.7 percent in Summer 2002 to 56.9 percent in Summer 2003. Average Metro return rate declined only 0.4 points from 54.0 percent in Summer 2002 to 53.6 percent in Summer 2003.
Response Rate Initiatives
On May 1, 2003 at a joint meeting of industry leaders, Arbitron unveiled a comprehensive plan designed to enhance the quality of its diary surveys across a number of measures including response rates.
“Our plan is a serious, multiyear commitment designed to address the issue of sample quality over the short and long terms,” said Owen Charlebois, president, U.S. media services, Arbitron Inc. “Our programs to address response rates in our radio diary service are yielding positive results. We are expanding our focus beyond the top ten to include twenty additional low response rate markets and are actively working on the next steps in our long range plan for expanding the scope of our response rate efforts. A significant part of our commitment to improve response rates was to ensure our new interviewing center was on line well in time for the beginning of the fall survey.”
The Summer 2003 survey began on June 26, 2003, and ended on September 17, 2003.
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