The ARF Copy Research Validity Project, which was completed in 1990, had its roots in a speech made by Ted Dunn at the ARF Annual Conference in 1977. Addressing the issue of the validity of copy testing he hypothesized that the answer existed in the archives of copy-testing experience but that, because it took so long to accumulate large enough data bases to permit generalizations and because each copy researcher saw only a small piece of the total, we might never learn the “truth.” He called for the formation of a committee to survey advertisers about the amount of validation work that had been done and their willingness to submit their copy-testing files to the ARF— given strong guarantees of confidentiality.

Accordingly, such a committee was formed and, in accordance with time-honored principles, Ted Dunn was named chairman.