Nielsen India and MRUC promise a new and improved IRS

The sample size will remain untouched at 2.35 lakh households, few changes will be implemented to save time in the process of conducting interviews. The new IRS will benefit from the use of Computer Aided Personal Interviews (CAPI). The introduction of data fusion is another change - a few sections of the interview can be skipped once there is an indication of the profile of an individual or a household (which has been interviewed in the past). The new IRS will also have the technology to track down interviews via GPS in order to eliminate the possibility of the possibility of fudging.

 “While IRS will continue to give out data on media consumption and product usage, the entire process will be far more rigourous. IRS will be far more accurate. We hope that with all our efforts, we succeed in bringing out a gold standard metric in print readership,” said RSCI chairperson Lynn De souza.  

Prashant Singh, managing director - media, Nielsen India, added, “The new IRS will be far more robust as we’ve tried to address a few issues such as sampling errors, lack of an efficient tracking system and of course the computer aided interviews that will make a whole lot of difference.”

Officials did not have concrete numbers on the pricing of the new IRS for subscribers, the issue is still under deliberation.