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From: chuq@sun.uucp (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.group
Subject: Re: polling and statistics
Message-ID: <3390@sun.uucp>
Date: Fri, 21-Mar-86 16:59:31 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.3390
Posted: Fri Mar 21 16:59:31 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 30-Mar-86 08:09:45 EST
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> lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) says:
> >Just a technical point about polling.  Comparing Usenet polls of this
> >sort to Gallup, Nielson (they're the ones with the boxes on the TV's,
> >not Arbitron), ...
> 
> Just a small thing here.  My family was recently a Nielson family and they did
> NOT hook up a box to our tv.  Rather, they gave us a logbook in which we
> recorded our viewing for the day.  ALthough there were some shows that I did
> not watch that I think are worthwhile, I was sorely tempted to report that I
> did watch them.  This certainly makes me wonder about the validity of the
> Nielson ratings.

Neison does two types of rating. The ratings you all hear about are based on
the rating boxes hooked up to TV's at 'Neilson Family' households. They do a
secondary and much larger survey using TV diaries to keep track of the 
validity of their family mix and make sure their smaller sample is really
valid. There does tend to be a bit of cheating in both the diary and box
samples (for example, it used to be that the boxes couldn't tell which
UHF station was tued to, to it was preset to a specific preferred UFH
channel, which got the vote regardless of the channel really tuned to) but
statistically they tend to wash out.

chuq

-- 
:From catacombs of a past participle:   Chuq Von Rospach 
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I used to really worry about splitting my infinitives until I realized
that most people had never heard of them.