12.5 percent target set for year-end 2009, 15 percent by year-end 2010;Address-based sample frame introduced for cell-phone-only recruiting in all markets;Diary markets on schedule for cell-phone-only sampling starting Spring 2009 Arbitron Inc. announced today that it will increase the sample target for cell-phone-only households in all Portable People MeterTM markets to 15 percent by year end 2010. In an interim step, the current target of 7.5 percent will be raised to 12.5 percent in PPMTM markets by year-end 2009.“Arbitron has developed, tested and is presently implementing an address-based sampling method to identify and contact cell-phone-only households,” said Bob Patchen, chief research officer, Arbitron Inc. “This new method is more efficient than the manual dialing procedures we had been using and thus allows us to substantially increase the number of CPO persons included in our panels. We are also retaining the rand om-digit-dialing (RDD) sampling method for land line homes because that approach enables telephone contact with a higher percentage of land line homes not listed in telephone directories. These unlisted land line households are more likely than listed ones to contain Hispanics, African-Americans and young adults. The better response achieved with telephone contact can improve the overall representation of these groups in our PPM samples.” “Increasing the number of cell-phone-only households in our PPM samples is an important element in our ongoing programs to enhance the participation of 18-34 year olds of all races and ethnicities, “said Owen Charlebois, president, Technology and Research & Development. “As the number of households that can be reached only by cell-phone continues to grow, Arbitron will update its methodologies to better include this important segment of the population.” For the New York PPM radio ratings service, Arbitron has already announced that it would increase the cell-phone-only sample target to 15 percent by July 2010.
