Scarborough Research Achieves Full Media Rating Council Accreditation for Local Market and Multi-Market Syndicated Research Services

Scarborough Research Achieves Full Media Rating Council Accreditation for Local Market and Multi-Market Syndicated Research Services

NEW YORK, Sept. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Scarborough Research, the leading marketing and media research firm for identifying the shopping, media and lifestyle patterns of adults in the United States, announced that the Media Rating Council (MRC) has fully accredited its core syndicated services: the 75 Top-Tier Local Market Studies and the Multi-Market Study, beginning with the 2006 product year. The full accreditation status covers Scarborough's syndicated data collected via telephone, consumer booklet and television diary. Additionally, PRIME NExT, Scarborough's proprietary data analysis software, has been fully accredited for the core syndicated services.

"It is with tremendous pride that we announce to the marketplace our recent achievement -- we are now a fully MRC accredited local market syndicated media research service," said Gregg Lindner, Executive Vice President, Research and Operations, Scarborough Research. "Quality data collection is paramount at Scarborough and we are pleased to have a prestigious and preeminent industry organization such as the MRC provide us with its double-checkmarks."

Scarborough has made significant investments in data quality. Scarborough's industry-leading interviewer training programs, and refinements to its research procedures and data production systems, have both improved data quality overall and enabled the company to deliver data to the marketplace faster.

George Ivie, Executive Director, Media Rating Council said, "We congratulate Scarborough on achieving accreditation for all aspects of its syndicated local measurement product. Scarborough has been committed to the MRC process for a long time and clearly has made strong efforts to improve quality and transparency."

"Scarborough has now raised the bar for local market syndicated media and marketing qualitative services in the U.S.," said Bob Cohen, Ph.D., President, Scarborough Research. "As the industry leader in qualitative research, we recognize the importance of high-quality, reliable data. MRC accreditation provides Scarborough users -- from marketers to print to electronic media to out-of-home media to advertising agencies -- with added confidence that our data meets the highest industry standards."

Scarborough Research employs a two-phase survey methodology to collect data. This results in a multi-step relationship with the respondent, tailored to maximize cooperation. The first step is a telephone interview, which measures extended demographic characteristics and media usage including newspaper readership and radio listening. The phone interview is followed by a mailed, self-administered consumer booklet and seven-day television diary. The consumer booklet measures over 1,700 categories and brands as they relate to shopping patterns (retail, automotive, grocery, furniture and home improvement), leisure time pursuits and event participation (leisure activities, voting, entertainment), product consumption (travel, telecom, Internet, beverage, finance, restaurants, health care, banking and financial), media usage (newspaper, monthly and weekly magazines, new/digital media, yellow pages), and sports (fan avidity, ticket purchases, league apparel). The seven-day television diary measures personal television viewing.

For more information about Scarborough methodology or for copies of our survey tools, please contact us at info@scarborough.com. Additional information about our methodology can be found at www.scarborough.com.

About Scarborough Research

Scarborough Research, an MRC accredited media and marketing service, (www.scarborough.com, info@scarborough.com) measures the lifestyle and shopping patterns, media behaviors, and demographics of American consumers. Products and services include local market consumer insight studies in 80 Top-Tier Markets (5 new markets added in release 2 2006) and 6 Mid-Tier Markets, Scarborough USA+ (a national database), Hispanic studies, customer relationship management and database integration solutions. With more than 30 years of experience, Scarborough measures 1,700 categories and serves a broad client base of approximately 3,500 subscribers including marketers, advertising agencies, electronic and print media, broadcast and cable television, radio stations, sports teams and leagues, and out-of-home companies. Surveying more than 210,000 adults annually, Scarborough is a joint venture between Arbitron Inc. (http://www.arbitron.com/) and VNU Media Measurement & Information (vnu.com).

About the MRC

The MRC is a non-profit industry association established in 1964 comprised of leading television, radio, print and Internet companies, as well as advertisers, advertising agencies and trade associations whose goal is to ensure measurement services that are valid, reliable and effective. Measurement services desiring MRC Accreditation are required to disclose to their customers all methodological aspects of their service; comply with the MRC's Minimum Standards For Media Rating Research; and submit to MRC-designed audits to authenticate and illuminate their procedures. In addition, the MRC membership actively pursues research issues they consider priorities in an effort to improve the quality of research in the marketplace. Currently, approximately 50 syndicated research products are audited by the MRC. For additional information about MRC visit their website at www.mediaratingcouncil.org.

Source: Scarborough Research

CONTACT: Allyson Mongrain, Scarborough Research, +1-703-451-3174
amongrain@scarborough.com

Web site: http://www.scarborough.com/
http://www.mediaratingcouncil.org/
http://www.arbitron.com/
http://vnu.com/

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