TV Viewership Study Earns Gold-Standard Accreditation
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March 2026
The Media Rating Council accredits the DASH study, making it the industry standard for understanding how U.S. households access and consume TV.
After a rigorous year-long audit process, the Media Rating Council (MRC) recently accredited the Advertising Research Foundation DASH TV Universe Study conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, validating its methodology. DASH measures how U.S. households connect to and consume television across platforms, services, and devices. The MRC’s accreditation is the industry’s gold standard. The MRC also took the unusual step of endorsing DASH for estimating cross-media usage.
DASH began the MRC accreditation process in 2025. The ARF-NORC team submitted extensive documentation and participated in detailed discussions about the study’s sampling procedures, interviewer training, data security, and quality-control measures. The MRC is a self-regulatory industry nonprofit, established in 1963 to audit and accredit media measurement products and data sources across multiple channels and products.
“MRC accreditation demonstrates that we can conduct the highest-caliber surveys for commercial as well as public sector clients, particularly those interested in drawing upon our scientifically rigorous, objective surveying capabilities to support their bottom line,” said David Sterrett, principal research scientist in NORC’s Public Affairs & Media Research department.
“MRC accreditation demonstrates that we can conduct the highest-caliber surveys for commercial as well as public sector clients, particularly those interested in drawing upon our scientifically rigorous, objective surveying capabilities to support their bottom line.”
The DASH survey captures granular details about every television, device, and streaming service in American households.
DASH conducts 10,000 interviews annually, combining phone, web, and face-to-face interviews via NORC’s AmeriSpeak® probability-based panel. What distinguishes this approach from others is AmeriSpeak’s dedication to contacting hard-to-reach populations by sending field interviewers to knock on doors of households that did not respond to initial outreach.
“These hard-to-reach groups tend to be younger people, people who are less engaged politically and socially, and people of color,” explained Sterrett, who directs the DASH project.
This extensive outreach provides a more representative sample of the American public, ensuring that DASH data reflect the full diversity of media-consumption patterns across demographic groups. To capture such information, ARF and NORC have developed a questionnaire that collects detailed information on every television in the home—including brand, location, age, connection type, and service provider—and itemizes the ownership and usage of video-capable mobile devices. In addition, the study measures usage of other digital media—including streaming audio, social, email and apps—and includes a module on ecommerce and in-store shopping.
The questionnaire also investigates individual and co-viewing behaviors. This level of detail provides a nuanced understanding of how people engage with content across platforms, helping stakeholders see beyond the fragmented view provided by individual media platforms to the full landscape.
“The media industry has long needed an independent, rigorous, and cost-efficient standard for universe estimation. That’s a gap the ARF was uniquely positioned to fill. We owe a great debt to our research partners at NORC and to our licensees across the industry for their technical and financial support of DASH,” said Scott McDonald, ARF’s CEO and president.
MRC accreditation opens new doors for DASH to serve the rapidly evolving media landscape.
The certification marks DASH as a trusted data source that others can confidently mine to build their own models and estimates.
“It drives home our ability to conduct benchmark studies that are reliable and can be widely used and trusted,” said Sterrett.
As streaming services proliferate and viewing habits continue to fragment, DASH’s role as an independent, objective standard becomes increasingly critical. We continuously update the survey questionnaire to capture new platforms and services, guaranteeing that it remains relevant as the industry evolves.
More broadly, the accreditation demonstrates NORC’s capacity to leverage our methodological expertise for commercial clients while maintaining the same rigorous standards applied to government research. The lessons learned from DASH—from quality control protocols to innovative recruitment strategies—inform NORC’s broader portfolio of high-stakes survey work.
This article is from our flagship newsletter, NORC Now. NORC Now keeps you informed of the full breadth of NORC’s work, the questions we help our clients answer, and the issues we help them address.
