Abstract:

This paper describes a multi-method approach for measuring total television viewing of the 2000 NCAA men's basketball tournament by 18-24 year olds. The approach exploits three information sources - the Nielsen Media Research (NMR) national people meter (NPM), Harris Poll telephone research, and panel-based online research - to estimate out-of-home viewership of those included within the NPM sampling frame, and total viewership of those excluded from the frame. In short, information derived from the NPM is fused with individual-level survey data to generate estimates of total viewership for the entire population of 18-24 year olds. The evidence generated through this approach suggests that the NPM seriously under-estimated total viewership of the major games of the event by 18-24 year olds.