Since the late 1980s, telephone interviewing has become an increasingly effective way of conducting research among the general public. With telephone ownership rising above 90%, it became possible to interview representative samples of the public; the fast turnaround of results and the opportunity for tight control over the interview process have provided researchers with some real advantages over face-to-face methods.
The June MORI Political Monitor, published today, finds little movement in voting intentions. Labour, contrary to the assumption that the Black Rod spin row must have damaged Mr Blair, is fractionally up since last month, though none of the figures have moved to a statistically significant degree — there is no more change than must be expected from sampling variation.
A series of recent surveys by MORI and other agencies have thrown considerable light on the current state of race relations in Britain and the hopes and fears of the minority ethnic communities.
If you take your view of British public opinion from the impressions reflected in the media, this has been something of a roller-coaster few months for the standing of the Monarchy and Royal Family.
This morning's widespread press discussion of last night's Commons vote to allow adoption by unmarried couples (including same-sex couples) makes much of the political ructions that the issue has caused in the Conservative Party, but there is little reference to public opinion on the issue.The issue is not yet resolved. Separate amendments defining that a couple can be of the same sex or different sex will be voted on next week; and the final bill may still be blocked in the Lords.
Now the dust has settled from the Chancellor's tax-raising budget, let us take the opportunity for a wider view of what we know about public attitudes to "tax and spend".
Last November we conducted a survey of British Asians on their attitudes to the military strikes in Afghanistan and to the War against Terrorism for Eastern Eye, a weekly newspaper aimed at Britain's Asian community. Over a third of the interviews were conducted by Asian interviewers. Therefore, in an interesting spin-off to the research we decided to look at whether or not the ethnicity of the interview made a difference on the answers given i.e. was there an interviewer effect? A number of studies in the United States and the in UK have been carried out looking into this phenomenon and several show that where the ethnicity of interviewer and respondent are matched, the responses yielded are different from those where they are not. These studies also suggest, however, that the interviewer effect only tends to be important when the subject of the survey is sensitive to the respondents' ethnicity or cultural background — which is what we found.
