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>>Paul Baines: Hi, my name is Paul Baines. With me here today is Sir Robert Worcester,
founder of MORI, who has come here to talk about the future of public opinion research.
Sir Robert, welcome.
>>Robert Worcester: Thanks for having me in today.
>>Paul Baines: One of the things about opinion research, it seems to me, is that it is a
very malleable thing and politicians often suggest that there is little point in looking
at opinion research, simply because politicians should lead public opinion not necessarily
follow it. What would you say to that?
>>Robert Worcester: I would say that they weren’t the smart politicians. The smart
politicians are taking it all on board, soaking it up, doing what Abraham Lincoln said was
sniffing the wind of the public mood. He went out to do what he called taking public opinion
baths, and remember that was 1860s for heaven’s sake, in the United States. Long before opinion
polls were invented.
Now, instead of being a politician sniffing the public wind, it is that they get systematic
and objective measures of public opinion and if you look at the public opinion that has
been measured over the last six months since the new administration was brought in and
the coalition government began, you will see that there has been an amazingly consistent
run of public opinion polls if measured by current voting intention at the time. Something
like 94% have been within plus or minus 3% of the average of all the polls taken over
that period of time for each party.
Now, you will know and many of your students here at Cranfield will know, that there is
a statistical reliability of opinion polls of 1,000 people or so of plus or minus 3%,
95% of the time. And all of this shows the statistical relevance, the statistical objectivity
that is being measured by public opinion polls. A politician who doesn’t understand the
difference between his making – or her making – a decision and being informed about public
opinion, rather than being mandated by public opinion. We don’t mandate anybody to do
anything. But smart companies, smart charities, smart quangos, smart government agencies do
a lot of market research and really when you get down to it, there is no difference between
market research and public opinion research; it is all relevant and using the same techniques.
>>Paul Baines: Do you think those techniques have changed? We have seen changes in technology,
we hear about listening rather than asking. How do you think market research is changing?
>>Robert Worcester: Market research and public opinion research is changing, but it is changing
at the margins. Tom Harrison invented in the late 30s, early 40s mass observations and
that was a listening device – it wasn’t systematic, it wasn’t objective, but it
was very effective in buttressing the Gallup polls that were being taken and the Gallup
method which was only brought into this country in 1937 by Harry Field coming and recruiting
Henry Durant from London School of Economics to set up for £50 a year, part time, to run
the Gallup poll. And that was being used by the government, by the Ministry of Information;
alongside the mass observations was the listening. So you had the measurement of listening at
the same time to inform Churchill and his government, his coalition government, to understand
how the British people were feeling. And there are wonderful books of the Gallup findings
back in the 40s that are always worth looking at and revealing what people said.
They also included the worse question that I have ever heard in 1938, which was asked
of the British public: are you in favour of direct retaliatory action against Franco’s
piracy? And in those eleven words broke five rules of good questionnaire construction.
>>Paul Baines: In terms of current techniques, new methods, how do you think that is changing
the nature of public opinion research, market research?
>>Robert Worcester: Well there are different techniques, but they are doing the same thing
which is sounding the public’s perceptions really. And Epictetus, of course, the first
century slave philosopher, said perceptions are truth because people believe them and
nobody should listen to that and understand the wisdom of it more than politicians, closely
followed by business and other executives making executive decisions over people’s
lives – whether they are the consumer, the staff, whoever, the public is of importance
and learning and feeling what they understand and know about their organisation, their company,
their brand, their product, whatever it is that they are researching.
>>Paul Baines: It seems to me that there could well be a change in the nature of the way
that companies differentiate themselves – in the 60s it was products, later on, the
80s onwards, it was more about brands. We have seemed, since the 90s and the 00s with
an era of sustainability, to have shifted to a situation in which companies are differentiating
themselves on values. Does this invoke a new sort of possibility for public opinion research,
market research?
>>Robert Worcester: Well I did corporate image research which looked at the beliefs that
people had about corporations and the brand of the corporation which certainly included
the focus on people’s values and the World Value Survey has been going since 1981, so
it is over 20 years old. And that is something that I have participated in for a very long
time – since 1986.
I am currently doing, as we speak, the World Value Survey in Trinidad, one of the fifty
or sixty countries of the world in which this values research is being done. We have written
several books – myself and my colleagues – focusing very largely on people’s values
because the values drive so much of people’s behaviour in terms of their shopping. Looking
down at my feet, I am seeing the shoes that my father wore, not the same shoes, but exactly
the same model that he did. Now those are values that are very hard to change. I have
used the same toothpaste for probably fifty years; I used to use the same kind of hairdressing,
but I don’t need that anymore.
>>Paul Baines: Perhaps a final question from me, then. How do you think directors, industrial
directors, senior chairmen and chief executives, misuse market research?
>>Robert Worcester: I think using it as a crutch to make the decisions that you perceive
the public want is not the right way to use market research. Market research should be
used to help you make better judgments in the knowledge of what people think, rather
than the absence of that knowledge.
>>Paul Baines: Thank you very much, Sir Robert.