During the second in a series of webinars, Nielsen detailed its move from paper screeners and diaries to completely digital consumer surveys to measure radio listening.
“The mSurvey, a move to an electronic survey on a mobile device, is designed as a secondary option for hard-to-reach demographics, those that would not participate in a paper version,” Nielsen Audio Managing Director Rich Tunkel says. “[It’s] a marked improvement for [those] demos. One of the key litmus tests is listening levels and audience information. It does us no good to improve on getting more people into the sample if they’re not going to be providing us with robust listening information, at least at the levels that we get in the paper version.”
Among those hard-to-reach segments are Black and Hispanic households, younger people, or renters. “These are groups that may be more interested in participating in an electronic survey, and that we’re having the hardest time getting paper surveys from,” Nielsen Director, Diaries and Surveys Robin Gentry says. “We may expand beyond that, but we first want to try this with people where we have the most faith that [they] are going to want to do electronic.”
The primary goals of mSurvey, Gentry says, is “to modernize the instrument in the way that we’re measuring, and to harness the technology that people carry around with them all the time. They carry their phones around, and it’s a really great way for us to be able to capture [their] listening concurrently with what they’re doing. We want to be able to meet respondents, a certain group of respondents in particular, where they’re at, from a technology perspective.”
While an earlier-tested version of mSurvey asked participants to include all audio media listened to — podcasts and other audio, aside from AM/FM radio, AM/FM streaming, and satellite — Gentry says the test to be conducted during the fall survey will focus only on radio, as that’s what’s included in the paper diary. “If we don’t see declines in listening, [and] if we see improvements in demographics, that would be the most optimal outcome for this test,” she says.
Still, there were positive findings from the earlier mSurvey test. “Generally, respondents reported that they logged their listening as frequently as they did in the paper diary, so they were good compliers,” Gentry says. “Also, it didn’t take them any more time than it did in the paper diary. Less than 25% of the sample said they preferred the paper diary over the electronic, [but] you have to remember that these are people who previously completed a paper diary, so they may be a bit biased. Also, it was a wide group of demographics for this test, so there were some older households that probably skewed more towards paper, so we expect that with the upcoming test that those folks are going to be much more interested in electronic diaries.”
The move from diary to digital aims to improve radio measurement while bringing Nielsen up to speed vs. the rest of the research universe. “The evolution is important to keep the diary relevant and resilient, as response rates have been decreasing and people, especially in hard-to-reach demos, are tending to forget to or have no interest in filling in paper surveys,” Nielsen Audio Global Panel Platform Leader Beth Eisenberg says, “[plus], these changes align Nielsen with marketplace trends that show an increase of doing survey measurement using technology rather than paper.”
As important as this transition is, with the goal to roll out mSurvey as part of Nielsen’s regular measurement by the end of 2025, Tunkel assures users of Nielsen’s data that the paper diary isn’t being completely phased out. “[It’s] going to be an option for people who prefer to communicate with us, and to fill out their surveys, in that mode. The paper diary is going to be in place for years to come.”
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