Why haven’t I ever met an African-American or Hispanic-American Nielsen Media Research family?

You probably have. There are thousands of African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans who have filled out a weekly diary or participated in Nielsen Media Research’s metered samples. We ask our sample households not to reveal that they have been selected for our diary or metered panels. This protects their privacy and helps ensure the integrity of the samples. In the few instances where homes have revealed their Nielsen Media Research status, we have removed them from the sample.

How can I become a Nielsen Media Research household?

Strictly through chance. Naturally we'd like to accommodate people who offer to be in our sample, but doing so would violate basic laws of sampling practice. The sample would immediately become biased because those who asked to join may be systematically different from the population at large.

Instead, we carefully draw our sample in a way that offers every U.S. television household an equal chance of being selected. Once the homes are selected and agree to participate, Nielsen Media Research protects their privacy by keeping their identities confidential.

How can Nielsen Media Research tell if people are really watching television?

This is really one of the most difficult questions we face. Some of the information we measure is possible to check by independent means. Programs are carried by stations and we can observe that when it happens. TV sets are tuned to particular stations and not to others, and we can measure that when it happens.

The only person who knows when viewing occurs is the viewer. Viewing is not necessarily looking at a TV; it is not necessarily being in the room with a TV; it is something that only the viewer can define. This is why we use the diary and the people meter; so that viewers can tell us what they do.

We conduct special research among former members of our TV meter and diary samples to learn more about how they actually watch television and how accurately they have reported their viewing. With the help of the viewing public, we are constantly learning more about the partnership between TV and its audience.

What is a metered market?

These are local markets where Nielsen Media Research uses set-tuning meters (not people meters) to report household ratings. The local metered-market ratings from 56 Nielsen Media Research markets as well as five special Hispanic-American markets) are usually available in the morning.  For this reason, when reporting network audience estimates, the early ratings are usually called "metered market overnights" or "preliminary" estimates. The National People Meter data are available at approximately 3 p.m..

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