Abeyance on IRS 2013 lifted

After intense deliberation and careful examination of the audit report, Chairman - MRUC, Chairman - RSCI, President - INS and Chairman - ABC arrived at the unanimous decision to lift the voluntary abeyance

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Mumbai | August 20, 2014

The voluntary abeyance placed on the Indian Readership Survey 2013 has been lifted with effect from Wednesday, August 20, 2014, according to statement released by Media Research Users Council (MRUC).

The IRS 2013 was released on January 28, 2014. The release attracted differing views on the accuracy of the data and therefore the Readership Studies Council of India (RSCI) voluntarily requested subscribers to hold the study in abeyance and decided to undertake a revalidation exercise.

Subsequently, a Sub-Committee for revalidation was established with two co-chairs representing publisher and advertising agencies. The Sub-Committee unanimously concluded that the methodology used to conduct IRS 2013 was in order and decided to commission a process audit.

This committee, after viewing several proposals unanimously agreed to award this audit to Praveen   Tripathi (Magic 9 Media), a leading expert on large-scale studies of media consumption behaviour.

It was decided that the findings of the revalidation sub-committee and the audit report would be discussed by the heads of four industry bodies, i.e., Chairman - MRUC, Chairman - RSCI, President - INS and Chairman - ABC, and a decision would be taken by them.

The heads of the four bodies deliberated upon the report submitted by Tripathi and discussed the same with the Chairman of RSCI – Technical Committee as well as the two Co-Chairmen of the revalidation committee.

The audit was conducted in two stages – one involving direct back checking of respondent homes after which a much broader and deeper forensic Statistical Analysis Exercise was carried out to identify and isolate both field work compliance deficiencies and incidences of the occurrence of Unusual Publication Incidence (UPI) in Respondent Interview Records. By sieving the aggregate data set for these issues, the audit was able to judge unequivocally whether the statistical deviations systematically changed any of the crucial readership outputs. The outcome was conclusive and unequivocal: the study result had not been impacted.

After intense deliberation and careful examination of the audit report, Chairman - MRUC, Chairman - RSCI, President - INS and Chairman - ABC have arrived at a unanimous decision to lift the voluntary abeyance placed on The Indian Readership Survey 2013.

Info@BestMediaInfo.com

Info@BestMediaInfo.com