Ipsos Scotland: the first ten years 1995-2005

A slim volume like this can do little more than provide a taster of the scope of the research we have conducted over the past ten years. However, I hope it proves of interest, and that it might contain some surprises for you. As an organisation with a household name, we have to be constantly aware of the adage that we stress to our clients - that perception is truth in the eye of the beholder. One challenge I have faced since taking over the management of MORI Scotland is to overcome the widespread misconceptions of what we do.

Of course MORI worked with clients in Scotland long before we established a permanent base in Edinburgh in 1995. My first experiences of polling, ten years earlier, were working with the Scotsman - conducting a long-running series of polls that still make interesting reading today. But we were also conducting research into entrepreneurialism for Scottish Enterprise, as well as working for big employers like Shell Expro and BP. Not to mention the first Scottish House Condition Survey that Scottish Homes contracted out, in 2001.

Some of our work has been particularly challenging. We've drawn on the skills and sensitivities of our interviewers in research among recently- bereaved relatives to find out how the medical profession dealt with them during the death of their loved ones. We have pushed interviewers hard and demanded the best in terms of response rates and fieldwork quality to sustain our reputation for conducting studies of the calibre of the Scottish House Condition Survey, the Scottish Crime Survey or the Scottish Household Survey. And we have undertaken detailed analysis to assess the impact and suitability of research methods, most recently in a hugely important study for the Scottish Executive, as we evaluated the switch to telephone interviewing for the Scottish Crime and Victimisation Survey.

Thankfully, the pressure sometimes has an immediate reward, like earlier this year when our telephone research centre in Leith - recently expanded to house over 160 specialist CATI stations - conducted our eve of the General Election poll (for the London Evening Standard) and delivered findings mirroring the final outcome. Elation and relief is a heady cocktail.

In our first ten years we have developed a growing office of research specialists. Our annual turnover is up from around 163150K to 1632.5 million. We have made a lot of friends and allies in specialist fields who are either clients or partners in our work. Local authorities of the scale of Glasgow and Edinburgh have been good clients, but so too have smaller authorities like Clackmannanshire. We have reported on low-budget qualitative studies, online research, schools-based exercises, and workshops. We have charted the rise of stakeholder research, and the movement of the issue of transport to centre-stage.

What is more, we've enjoyed it. Thank you, and here's to the next ten years!