The Arbitron Answer Man

Whenever I have a question, I turn to John Snyder at ARB for the answer.

For example, a client PD asked...

If I were going to rank the metro counties based on how they impact the ratings, would it be done strictly by population? Does each county count XXX amount based on the number of people in it?

JS says "the bigger the county (in population) more diaries should go there. Thus if county A has 20% of the metro population, 20% of the diaries should go there, if not those diaries will be weighted up or down depending on the diary return to equal 20%. The diaries are weighted geographically based on return. Diaries in HD areas are weighted separately but so are diaries in any sampling unit ( for example a split county). If we under sample an HD area (or any sampling unit) those diaries will be weighted up, meaning one diary might equal 450 people instead of 350 people."