Keywords: Trend Research

Social and market researchers’ expertise in predicting change in behaviour and/or attitudes is mixed. Predictions could be improved by taking a longer, historical view: and that view requires data from the past to understand the meaning of that French expression…. “ the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Commercial researchers have either no time or no inclination to refer to past data. Academic researchers-- both students and teachers-- are unaware of the rich amounts of market research data relevant to their studies.

Two years ago group of researchers decided to develop the first national archive of UK market and social research. Early research indicated that academic teachers and students were most enthusiastic about have open access to commercial as well as non- commercial data. In the UK there are large gaps between the commercial and non-commercial audiences; if we could demonstrate the usefulness of past commercial research to academics; we would enhance the knowledge base of the country. Furthermore if we could demonstrate to commercial researchers that past data could help them solve present day problems, we could improve the degree of accuracy of predictions for business decisions.

In setting up the new archive, we recognised that data of vital importance to both academia and business were being destroyed all around us. For example, the Central Office of Information (COI), founded in 1946 was the UK government's marketing and communications agency collecting information affecting the lives of British citizens, from health and education to benefits, rights and welfare. COI was closed in 2011.

The first gap? -- academics have little awareness of how commercial research could help them. Social change became a major issue in the 1960’s. Yankelovich in the USA, In the 70’s RISC (The International Research Institute of Social Change) BPO (British Opinion Poll) Eurobarometer, World Panel and others began collecting trend data across counties. Commercial researchers predicted correctly the continued optimism of the baby boomers (today’s 50’s to 64’s) who are now significantly less concerned about their future outlook compared with the 20-34 year olds. Academics were slower off the mark.

The second gap? Commercial researchers are ignorant of past phenomena and thus fail to predict changes in behaviour. An example is in sexual harassment. In 1992 a British trade union commissioned MORI to carry out the study as part of a larger study to raise the awareness of sexual harassment in the workplace. The results showed that the vast majority (70%+) of both men and women could describe serious sexual harassment. E.g., 89% of men said that to tell a woman colleague that “your sexual fantasies involve her” was very or fairly serious. The response from women was 90%.

25 years later it required a trigger, Harvey Weinstein, for men and women to manifest their attitudes. Having just begun the archive we were able to tell the media that sexual harassment had long been a matter for concern. Yes! behaviour did change after 25 years, but the degree of awareness of sexual harassment remained the same over this period.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!

Trend research is vital for both businesses and academics who are taking decisions or reporting results that have long-term implications: Longitudinal data can be accumulated in every country to allow decision-makers and researchers to track and assess the impact of their actions.

Plus ça Change
Allow change to become more predictable. We shall be describing the beginning of the AMSR, the collection of data, the cataloguing, digitising, promotion of the archive, website development,