"Bart Bailey" wrote in message
...
In posted on
Mon, 3 Sep 2007 10:36:32 -0700, David Eduardo wrote: Begin

Nope, not any single person's thinking. It is the data from Arbitron in
the
first two People Metered markets.

How can you be sure that Arbitron or Neil son or whomever,
actually does a survey, and how many respondents really are there,
and is their claimed demographic true or just wishful thinking?
That's the level of unsubstantiated faith
that packs 'em into the god houses every sunday
and drains their wallets.

Unlike communication with God, Arbitron and Nielsen are audited by a
committee of researchers and statisticians named by the advertising industry
which has a vested interest in the outcome of ratings. The methodology has
to be extensively proven (6 years of field tests for the People Meter) to
get approval, and every year an extensive audit of the sample,
themethodology and the processing is done.

For the diary-based survey, all subscribers can actually see the completed
diaries for each market and check every page. This has been true for 4
decades, and Arbitron has a suite of 10 offices where one can perform as
many checks as they want.

The fact that nobody in the ad business questions the surveys would indicate
that each person has satisfied all these "conspiracy" questions long ago.