To provide the best possible quality Local People Meter panels at launch, Nielsen Media Research is introducing several quality improvements to the process through which we obtain cooperation and ongoing compliance from our panel homes.  These improved methods will help us strengthen the quality of our Los Angeles sample in particular, and be applied as appropriate in all Local People Meter markets moving forward.

A dedicated cross-functional senior management team has been in place since the fall of 2002
to oversee and continuously review all procedures related to Local People Meters. With the announced rescheduling of the launch of Local People Meters in Los Angeles, this team has completed a thorough review of our panel recruitment and maintenance procedures and has made recommendations for the implementation of the following set of quality improvements.

More effective use of Prepack information
We currently collect information from prospective sample homes before we attempt to recruit them.  The more we know about a household, the better able we are to target special recruitment techniques tailored to the specific makeup of the household. We have thoroughly reviewed our procedures and are fine-tuning them to make better use of the information gathered. Specifically, we will develop and share best practices for utilizing Prepack information; we will automate the dissemination of this material to the Field; and we will use the Prepack to determine if the household is aware of Nielsen Media Research and forward educational materials to the home when appropriate.

Household incentives
Increased and somewhat modified use of differential incentives will be employed, including monthly payouts (rather than biannual) for lower income / education households, increased gift amounts (still relatively nominal, but more in line with contemporary expectations), and increased incentives for larger households (five or more persons).

Membership Representative incentives
Incentive payments to our MRs for recruiting a formerly refusing basic will be increased. While we believe that our current process and incentive is effective for recruiting previous refusers, this pilot program will be used to measure whether higher incentives will further improve our results.

Structured Initial Turnover
With our People Meter samples in Los Angeles and New York having reached their full size of 800 households, and the Chicago sample closely approaching its full size, Nielsen is employing a procedure to even out the turnover required in a new panel, similar to the one we employ when establishing any new metered sample (whether Set Meters, Local People Meters, or even the initial establishment of the National People Meter sample in 1987).  In this procedure, a portion of the homes are turned over in the sample earlier to insure that turnover occurs gradually, rather than in large numbers at one time at the end of the first 2 year period.

More specifically, to avoid disproportionate turnover, it our policy and practice when installing a new market, to accelerate the turnover of some of the sample homes at the end of the first year in order for the turnover moving forward to be proportional over the normal two-year turnover period.  This is a normal one-time-only procedure for the turnover of a new sample to ensure orderly future turnover, and it will be used in all Local People Meter markets – this procedure does not apply to the National cutback portion of a Local People Meter sample, however, because these homes were not newly installed in a compressed timeframe.  In order to ensure that our samples are of the highest quality, we are enhancing this procedure to prioritize the turnover of the specs that come due for this accelerated turnover, so that those most likely to help better balance our sample composition are addressed first.

Additional supervision
We have added another Membership Representative supervisor in Los Angeles through the start of service to more effectively supervise the increased staffing levels.  Further, our Hispanic Services membership supervisor will have an increased presence in the market to apply protocols for sharing best practices, especially among bi-lingual Membership Reps.

Additional senior management presence
Given the heightened public attention to the introduction of People Meters in local markets, we must provide our Field force with a more frequent hands-on leadership presence – not only from their Field management team, but from general Nielsen senior management as well.   Recent publicity could easily lead to morale issues if not attended to immediately and regularly.

With these additional quality initiatives, we not only expect our Los Angeles sample to meet our goals for launch by July 8, but we feel that moving forward, all markets will benefit from even stronger sample representation.