Against the Trend - Huge Gain in Response Rates for Simmons Research in the US 2/6/00 Following the recent gloom over co-operation rates, a cheery story from the States where Simmons has announced a record response rate of 34% for its Spring 2000 National Consumer Survey (NCS). In the field from October 1999 to April 2000, this record response rate reflects an 8-point increase from Spring 1999. The resulting intab sample size of 16,000 for the Spring 2000 survey is one of the company's highest and the combined Autumn 1999/Spring 2000 will have an intab of almost 33,000, again a Simmons record. According to Steve Carnevale, General Manager of Simmons, "It is quite an impressive feat to continue to increase co-operation rates, particularly at a time when most other research suppliers are witnessing declining co-operation rates as everyone is vying for the attention of the American consumer. During a time when the US Government and others are struggling to achieve their goals or in some cases have scaled back plans to increase sample, we're more than happy to report such strong results and to be able to pass them on to our clients in the form of higher quality data." This high response rate reflects both an increase in initial consent and an increase in the return rate from those who agreed to co-operate with Simmons. Through improved execution, better sample management and a vast decrease in interviewer attrition, Simmons has been able to achieve record high sample size and continually increasing response rate both in the field and on the telephone. Simmons provides the only media-neutral syndicated multimedia survey. The Survey measures all major media -- magazines, radio, newspapers, tv, cable television, online usage -- using the same survey instrument, and therefore provides planners with a common platform to evaluate the best media to reach their targets. The data has undergone no ascription so that the information being delivered to clients is exactly what was collected from the respondents.