Urban Unrest

13 December 2007 | Pacifica | Ernesto Aguilar

I’ll be a guest of the KPFT Community Advisory Board tonight at 7 p.m. at KPFT, 419 Lovett. Among the items we’ll be discussing will be an October report I gave to our Local Station Board on Arbitron trends over the last few years and implications for the station financially and otherwise.

Arbitron collects data by calling a random sample of a population (based on phone records). From here, Arbitron signs up several thousand individuals to maintain written diaries that list when they listen to which radio stations. Each selected household agreeing to participate is provided a diary for each member aged 12 and older for one week, typically beginning on Thursday and ending the following Wednesday. At the end of the week, the completed diaries are returned to Arbitron by mail.

In a recent effort to collect more accurate data, Arbitron introduced the Portable People Meter (PPM) to respondents and stations. The PPM is a wearable device similar to a pager or cell phone. It electronically records the listening behavior and history of a single respondent by detecting encoded signals in a given broadcast stream, individualized to stations. KPFT, like almost all Houston stations, encodes its signal for recording into PPM. This PPM data is collected throughout the day for several months. The PPM service is currently in use in the Houston and Philadelphia markets, with expectation for nationwide rollout in “a few years,” according to Arbitron.

Arbitron is not perfect, and there are many instances of statistical variances. In a 1995 report, Arbitron estimated, over 39600 schedules, a relative standard error (error expressed as a percentage of the measure) of about 7.6 percent; although few newer studies exist, Arbitron is expected to have reduced that number significantly. Still, variances can happen for many reasons, from respondents’ failure to log listening to changes in listening habits and more. Furthermore, Arbitron, by its own admission, is struggling to develop ways of attracting listeners in the 18-34 age demographics to participate in its research. By recent reports, Arbitron has noted some challenges in attracting what can be an elusive demographic to participate in radio studies. In addition, Arbitron’s surveys are cultivated via telephone landline; this excludes populations that may use mobile phones exclusively from participation in Arbitron. Some have argued such rules impact African-Americans and Latinos most significantly. All of these issues and variances should be considered when reviewing findings.

Our Community Advisory Board is usually pretty prompt, so if you’re interested, come by tonight.

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