Is Past, the Future? Resampling Past Respondents to Improve Current Response Rates
Abstract:
The Nielsen TV Ratings Diary service involves the use of a one-week TV diary survey for measuring TV ratings. While the service has been around for a while, it recently received a sampling makeover to address the diminishing coverage associated with landline random-digit dialing (RDD) surveys. Address-based sampling (ABS) replaced RDD as the sampling methodology for the diary service. While internal studies have found that the use of ABS helped improve the coverage of the diary service, concerns about low response rates to diaries continue to linger, especially among certain demographic cohorts (such as minorities and young adults). Therefore, in an effort to increase the response rates, improve demographic representation of address-based samples, and to reduce costs, the Nielsen Company in 2011 investigated re-contacting previous diary respondents among four key demographic cohorts: Age of Head of Household (AOH) less than 35, AOH between the ages of 35 and 54, Blacks, and Hispanics. This article describes this effort.
Using an experimental design, newly sampled and re-contacted respondents in the four cohorts were provided with multiple response inducements at various stages of the diary recruitment and response process. In addition to presenting quantitative evidence of the effect of response inducements on cooperation and television tuning rates among new and re-contact households across demographic cohorts, this article concludes with a call for further research on this topic and recommendations for future research.
Recommended Citation:
Bell, S., Chmura, L., Rao, K., Kurzynski, D., Yancey, T., & Dolson, T. (2012). Is Past, the Future? Resampling Past Respondents to Improve Current Response Rates. Paper presented at the American Association for Public Opinion Research, Orlando, FL.
Attached Documents:
- AAPOR 2012 Program (see page #66 for the mention)
- For a copy of this paper/presentation, please send me a comment with your email address in the box below.