Peter Mouncey
Opinion
15 February 2017
•
A very thought provoking article with this title was published in the Guardian in the Journal section on 19 th January by William Davies . Davies provides a very detailed analysis of the current crisis facing statistics, and the growing lack of trust in them as a source of truth, especially in the political sphere. Statistics are suffering a decline in authority, as are the experts who analyse them in the 'post-truth' world. As Davies states:
Opinion
10 November 2016
•
IJMR special issue
Opinion
21 July 2016
•
This is the title of a new discussion paper recently published by The Alliance for Useful Evidence . The principle underlying the paper is that simply providing access to evidence does not mean that it will be used.
Opinion
21 April 2016
•
Who will succeed in the new age of data discovery? We asked a panel of four international experts across academia and business to share their views on where the world of insight is going, and how it is adapting to a data-rich, connected, and social world. Speaking at the 2016 MRS Impact conference held in London this March, the panel drew a large crowd for a lively debate.
Opinion
02 September 2015
•
One major accusation levelled at the pollsters in their failure to correctly predict the likely outcome of the UK general election back in May was that their incorrect forecasts influenced both the intentions of voters, and the strategies of the political parties.
Opinion
21 July 2015
•
As many of you will know, the British Polling Council (BPC) and MRS have launched an inquiry into the performance of the opinion polls in the UK preceding the May general election. A distinguished panel of experts has been appointed, chaired by Patrick Sturgis (U. Southampton and Director of the National Centre for Research Methods). Key differences between the this inquiry and the one set up by MRS in 1992 are firstly, the 2015 panel is totally independent from the polling sector, comprising mainly academics (see the BPC website for details), whereas in 1992 leading pollsters predominated. Secondly, the final report was not published until July 1994 (with an initial view by June 1992), but the latest panel hope to publish their report in early March 2016.
Opinion
03 June 2015
•
GreenBook provided a 'Sneak Peek' of the findings from their latest GRIT (Research Industry Trends) survey in a webinar on May 14th, with a panel of research sector leaders to discuss the key points.
Opinion
02 April 2015
•
In the latest issue of IJMR, we are publishing three papers on the theme of measurement formats. The first is a comprehensive literature review, by Callegaro et al, that in addition to summarising 'best practice' in the search for 'truth' in data collection, also identifies gaps in current published knowledge in this field.
Opinion
10 March 2015
•
I'll let you into a secret – maths was NOT my strong point at grammar school. I never really got the hang of algebra, and the maths teacher I had for several years did little to stimulate interest and understanding in his students. However, going to college changed all that. We had a young, inspirational lecturer for statistics, and suddenly the fog lifted, and I got the point of it all. Enough to say that I achieved a high mark in a maths related field for the first time in my life. I was weaned on texts such as Moroney's 'Facts from Figures', and for research methods, Moser and Kalton's 'Survey Methods in Social Investigation'.
Opinion
21 January 2015
•
As we enter 2015, electioneering in the UK has already started, up front of May's general election. Is this going to be a difficult time for the pollsters, especially following on from their perceived performance in predicting the outcome of last September's referendum in Scotland on independence?
Opinion
10 January 2015
•
In my last blog, I wrote about the risks to anonymity facing participants in confidential research projects if we don't give sufficient thought to the risk posed from creative analysts accessing survey data.
Opinion
18 December 2014
•
We, I mean members of the MRS Market Research Standards Board, spent a lot of early 2014 finalising the revised Code of Conduct, published by the MRS this autumn. In particular, we spent a lot of time debating the issue of anonymity, which features far more in the latest version than before.
Opinion
22 November 2014
•
In a recent blog, I focussed on a presentation by Mike Page (Blueocean) at September's ASC conference. Page discussed the reasons why market research data remains outside corporate data warehouses. One key point he mentioned was the lack of consistency in definitions used within questionnaires, for example in recording standard demographics.
Opinion
06 November 2014
•
I've already selected one Landmark paper that focused on the importance of Census data to market research, that by Baker et al (' The utility to market research of the classification of residential neighbourhoods ') originally presented at the 1979 MRS Conference and reprinted in JMR Vol. 39 No.1 which described the then recent development of geodemographics.
Opinion
25 October 2014
•
The Association of Survey Computing (ASC) held their second one day conference of 2014 at Imperial College, London, on September 26th on the theme of 'Making connections: unleashing the power of data'.
Opinion
12 October 2014
•
'Polls failed to predict such a decisive result'
Opinion
03 September 2014
•
The title of this blog comes from a new 51 page report, Big Data and Data Protection, published on 28 July by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) in the UK. The report is based on research into big data and privacy undertaken since June 2013, including secondary research, interviews with practitioners and experts in the field.
Opinion
06 August 2014
•
The latest Landmark Paper is drawn from the two special issues of JMRS, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the MRS. It was originally published in the Proceedings of MRS Conference 1985, and presented at that event by the authors.
