Subject: Re: Unfair TV Ratings - Ron Reagan show (TP/30Something)
From: unknown@Apple.COM (Matt Ackeret)
Date: 1991-08-29, 17:35
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv,alt.tv.twin-peaks

In article <1991Aug28.222140.18463@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> phil@eecs.nwu.edu (William LeFebvre) writes:
> >In article <56693@apple.Apple.COM>, unknown@Apple.COM (Matt Ackeret) writes:
> >|> I'm not saying that the Nielsen families ARE a statistically valid
> >|> sample.. they probably aren't.
> >I don't want to get in to the position of defending A.C. Nielsen, but
> >for what reason do you blithely assume that the Nielsen families
> >"probably aren't" a statistically valid sample?  Do you have any idea
> >at all what method the company uses to select those homes?

For one thing, we didn't quite define what we are attempting to take
a statistically valid sample OF.

Is it all TV owning families?  Where do they get the people to join?
Telephone books? While it is rare for someone to not have a telephone nowadays,
there was a poll in the early 1900s that came out to be vastly incorrect 
since they used telephone books back then, and then only rich people (mainly
Republicans) had phones... So the poll wasn't an accurate representation.

I cannot prove that it isn't a statistically valid sample, I just 
would guess that the determination of who becomes a Nielson family is 
skewed to a more affluent crowd in some way or another. Unfortunately, in the
higher income brackets, then different races aren't always as prevalent as
the proportions are in the general US population..

There are just lots of things that come to mind that could very well
affect the choice of families.

I very well could be wrong... but I don't THINK that I am.
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