Researching The Future

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The Lifestyle Network Tuesday, 6 June 2000 Natural History Museum

The toughest job a researcher is asked to do is to research the future. Some social scientists can predict with accuracy what will likely happen in the future. Demographers know today what will happen tomorrow in terms of the percentage of old age pensioners in Britain in the year 2020, for tomorrows 65-75 year old OAPs are today's 45-55 year old cohort, and while mortality rates change slightly over time, these too are pretty predictable. Demographers can't tell you who will be alive then, but they can say with remarkable accuracy how many will be, and the demographic and geographic breakdown of those.

Weather forecasters claim to get it right about 70% of the time. If we pollsters had their record, we'd have been out of business long ago.

The medical profession, one of the most trusted occupational groups in this or any other country, are even less certain than the weather forecasters.

One doctor recently was asked by one of my colleagues before an operation 'I suspect that half your diagnosis is based on knowledge, and half on judgement?' 'No', he replied, 'more like 10% knowledge and 90% judgement.'

Not only are we survey researchers at the mercy of people's opinions and attitudes, but the weather, the medical profession, the economy, the political scene, and all those indefinable things that make up perk up, or hunker down.

WHAT WE DO IN OUR TRADE?

My definition of survey research, for what it is worth, is 'Public opinion is the collective view of [a representative sample of] a defined population.'

Thus workers in a factory, of interest to the factory manager, trade union or civic leaders in the local community; residents of a local community, of interest to civic leaders again, politicians, the local media, pressure groups, industrialists thinking of siting a plant there; students at a university, of interest to the government students at LSE when I advised them when they conducted an opinion poll in advance of a mock American presidential election, and had more taking part in the poll than took part in the mock election! (which, asked I, was the more representative?); 'certain to' voters, of greater interest to me at the last British general election in determining who I thought was going to win, and of greater interest to my client, The Times, and therefore of greater interest to the broadcast media who diffused my findings, and therefore to the political actors whose hold on office or prospect thereof was promised or threatened, and therefore to the public: full circle. Or young people, or the elderly, or women, or Captains of Industry, or institutional investors, or editors, or parliamentarians, or any slice of society that can be defined with precision and replicability.

There are five things that we measure with the tools of our trade-unions:

• behaviour
• knowledge
• opinions
• attitudes
• values

The first two are easy to define and understand. Behaviour is what we do, and knowledge is what we know (or think we know). The other three are certainly more difficult to define and understand, and certainly much less commonly agreed. I finally settled on 'collective view' in my definition of public opinion to incorporate the three levels of thought that I perceive that we are trying to measure, opinions, attitudes and values. I have defined these terms, rather too poetically I fear for scholarly adoption, as

"opinions: the ripples on the surface of the public's consciousness, shallow, and easily changed; attitudes: the currents below the surface, deeper and stronger; and values: the deep tides of public mood, slow to change, but powerful."

Opinions in my own view are those low salience, little thought about reactions to pollsters' questions about issues of the day, easily manipulated by question wording or the news of the day, not very important to the respondent, not vital to their well being or that of their family, unlikely to have been the topic of discussion or debate between them and their relations, friends and work mates, easily blown about by the winds of the politicians and the media.

Attitudes, the currents below the surface, derive in my view from a deeper level of consciousness, are held with some conviction, and are likely to have been held for some time and after thought, discussion, perhaps the result of behaviour (Festinger's cognitive dissonance), and harder to confront or confound.

Examples of these are the Scots' support for a separate assembly, held with some force over generations and based on strong beliefs that they are not fairly represented either in Parliament or in our system of government, perhaps attitudes to the taking of medicines or exercise, forms of education, local authority service delivery for services used frequently and by large percentages of citizens such as rubbish collection, street lighting and schools.

Values then are the deepest of all, the powerful tides, learned parentally in many cases, and formed early in life and not likely to change, only harden as we grow older. These include belief in God, attitudes to religion generally, views about abortion or the death penalty, family values, and the like. It is almost impossible for these to be changed by persuasion, by media discussion or propaganda, or by the positions and arguments of political debate, except over long periods, concerted thought and discussions, a feeling that one is out of step with others they know and respect, and, often, new evidence, changing circumstances or continuing behavioural experiences.

The tools of our trade-unions are chiefly the qualitative and quantitative methodologies that have been developed over the past sixty or so years.

What polls (and I use the term more or less interchangeably with surveys, as does the Oxford English Dictionary, although there are those who use 'polls' to describe 'political' soundings) cannot tell us well are likely future actions of the public generally and especially the future behaviour of individuals. They are better at telling us what , rather than why .

To find out why is the principal function of qualitative research and especially focus groups which major on the interaction of the group rather that the question and answer, 'expert' on respondent, format of the individual depth interview. Focus groups aren't very good at sussing out what people do, or might do.

Polls are not particularly good at exploring concepts unfamiliar to respondents, nor are they good at identifying the behaviour, knowledge or views of tiny groups of the population, except at disproportionate expense.

My own position on the role of polls, surveys and assessment of public opinion by the way is one not of advocacy of any particular policy, subject or topic, but of the provider of both objective and subjective information, obtained systematically and objectively, analysed dispassionately and delivered evenly. (Worcester 1981) I do feel passionately about the principle that decisions about public policy (and both party policy and corporate policy for that matter) should be made in the knowledge of rather than in the absence of the knowledge of the public's view.

Indeed, a heartening trend I have observed during the past two decades is an increasing recognition in industry that public consent and goodwill are vital to their prosperity. The past century has been called the 'Measured Century', the first when economic, social, political and environmental conditions have been put to the discipline imposed by statistical systems, tracked over time, and the results distributed to both policy makers and, more and more frequently, to the people. First to the educated elites in the first half of the century, and in the latter half much more widely, both within countries and cross-nationally.

Over the years the work I do has modernised and globalised as yours has. The World Values Survey, the Eurobarometer, this past five years, the Latinobarуmetro, and for nearly three years, the 'People's Panel', a world first, for the British Government's Cabinet Office, have been used to inform policy makers in both business and government not just people's opinion, and attitudes, but also their values, to help develop products and services provided by industry to consumers, but also 'joined-up government to citizens, for the people, and by the people, not to dictate to policy makers, but to better inform them, so they make better, more user friendly policy.

Change

The pace of change, corporate, product, political and consumer, is accelerating at an accelerating rate. To some people that's frightening all of the time. And to most of us it's frightening at least some of the time.

Longevity threatens economic stability, global money movement and speed and independence of communications from government restrictions threaten economic sovereignty. The family structure is under threat, with the greatest projected growth the single person household, trends to the service economy and an increasing proportion of women in the workforce, downsizing and growth in part-time jobs, equally desired by both men and women, the rise of the civic society, rejection of role models and loss of confidence in institutions, acceptance of feminism and informality, loss of status and breaking down of hierarchies all present both threats and opportunities to our society.

Europe and America's share of world trade-unions is approximately the same: about 18%. Gigantic mergers are announced every day. Deregulation, technological change (look at the public reaction to GMOs!), corporate restructuring, all are having their impact.

Our work with the Sociovision consortium of research companies across Europe is designed to research the future. Sociovision has uncovered a number of 'cross-cultural convergences' to be taken into account when thinking about the years ahead:

• A growing gap between institutions and people
• A move from self-centredness to autonomy
• A flow from ideology to the need for meaning
• A trend from an organised social structure to a network culture
• A current from feminism to feminisation of society
• A drift from rational to polysensorial

All of these will affect our society, and, inevitably, your business.

Other convergences include

• Going from saving time to savouring time
• Going from pleasure-seeking to parallel crude and discerning hedonism
• Going from 'ecology' to daily environmental friendliness

But there is a growing sense that daily life has become too stressful and that security is undermined. In the application of Maslow's 'Hierarchy of Human Needs', sustenance is assured, but security is threatened. Esteem is under attack, and self-actualisation comes hard.

Crude hedonism is on the rise; more drugs, and more anti-social behaviour, and growing faster with young women than young men; too many are what we call the 'underwolves' , which we define as the underdog who bites back .

What do you make of it when I tell you that our last Socioconsult wave we found that fully 85% of the British said they have modified their lifestyle so that they live according to what is important to them, and that 74% avow that in future, they would like to enjoy life more consciously? How these attitudes are affecting their behaviour is the stuff of research into the future. Who are they? Which part of the country are they most prevalent? What is their age distribution, their point in their life cycle? These are the views that people hold that are the grist to our mill.

We try to marry these attitudes with demographics as well. For instance, in the rich world today there are three people in work to support one pensioner; by 2030 this ratio will fall to 1.5 to 1; most of the people in this audience today will be a pensioner. It will take between 9% and 16% of the GDP in these countries to support today's pension promises, never mind the increased cost of health care and housing that will be required.

Now pensioners represent one in five of the adult population, and one in four will be a pensioner in two decades. The typical retired household occupant in 20 years will be a lone woman.

All of this will result in resentments building up

• Young against old
• Poor against rich
• Rural against urban
• Scientists against the People
• Producers against consumers
• The People against the Institutions
• Central government against local government
• Everybody against big business

Engineers want high tech; people want high touch. And most challenging of all: Working class groups feel excluded and are anxious about new technologies and most resistant to new ways of working.

The media are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Our Sociovision arm, Socioconsult, found in our most recent study that

• There is more exacting expectations for all aspects of service performance delivery, lower tolerance for product failure/shortcomings, rejection of delays, hassle implications for workers in service industries.

And what are the implications that:

• There is increasing concern about the positive influence of technology, and growing scepticism of the 'man in the white coat'.
• That there will be more women than men in the workforce by 2005
• Half of people in work, and everybody in this room, use a PC at work, and most do at home; in fact, one in four people in Britain now have home desk PCs. Four in 10 are on mobile phones; one in five are on the web, one in four on E-mail, more now than on fax, according to our latest report for Motorola "The British & Technology 2000" the fifth in our annual series for Motorola -- see also www.britishandtechnology.co.uk
• Young people are downsizing, wanting a better balance between work and home life.
• Many are adjusting their goals and being ready to change tack, driven by the uncertainties of British life.
• Almost half the public say they would like to bank electronically, three in 10 by enhanced mobile phone.
• One in four now use a mobile phone daily (23%)
• Six per cent are now aware that international telephone calls can be made over the internet, triple the two per cent a year ago.
• One in three say they'd like to purchase travel tickets electronically
• Almost a third, 31%, say they' d like to shop electronically
• Roughly half of the British public say they would like to vote electronically?

The i-generation has very traditional expectations. Over half expect to get married and buy a house, 42% expect to go to university, 43% expect to be rich and one in four expects to run their own business.

Conclusions

All of us here today know that new technology brings benefits to people both through business and through government. Yet half or more of the public aren't convinced. It ain't easy to either prosper in business or govern in a technological age. Yet that is the Age we are in, in this, the first year of a new millennium.

Technology brings people together across the world, across our nation, and across social divides. It can be, is being and should be a force for good in our society. Information is power, and technology is an enabler of people power in the hands of the people. And that's got to be good for Britain if we can understand, anticipate, proactively respond and ... stay loose.

Thank you.