Abstract: Consumer driving-activity market research information may be obtained by selecting panelists to form a consumer driving-activity panel. At least one trackable motor vehicle and at least one consumer driver who has use of the vehicle are associated with each panelist of the panel. The trackable motor vehicles associated with the panel provide representatives from a varied plurality of vehicle-classification categories and the consumer drivers associated with the panel provide representatives from a varied plurality of demographic categories. For each panelist, panelist attribute data including vehicle-classification data and driver demographic data are stored in a data processing system. During trip portions of a sample group of trip portions, time-annotated vehicle-location data approximately tracking the movement of each trackable motor vehicle are generated automatically by means of automatic vehicle-location tracking gear on the vehicle.

Abstract: A method for independently centrally electronically accumulating market survey data from different content rapidly disseminated multiple inquiry market surveys from a plurality of panelist stations (14, 16, 18, 20) located at diverse locations. Variable market survey questionnaires to diverse located panelists may be remotely rapidly disseminated from a centrally located host computer (12) to the panelist stations (14, 16, 18, 20) over a common communications link (22 or 104) for individual visual display at the panelist stations (14, 16, 18, 20), such as on a CRT (42) or television set (44) or alphanumeric display (45), with the displayed questionnaires resulting from a downstream loaded set of control instructions stored in a local survey program RAM (54) whose content may be remotely varied from the head end or host computer (12).