Marshall Place Associates Live More of Your Life

Fred Hilmer, former head of Fairfax media, has confirmed that even the mighty media tycoons are plagued with pressures to inflate readership and hide the truth of falling print circulation from the owners of the business. Politicians and their party machines prefer to delude themselves with their private, unpublished polls so that they can claim to speak for ”the people” that they are seeking to influence.
Elections measure what people have voted for people in their constituencies and accounts register transactions that have already happened, but neither provides any insight into the core of the matter- the mind of the market. Polls produced by and for the parties that fund campaigns and sell space on the basis of their ratings have an inherent bias that leads the community to want to see an average of poll data that includes the Morgan Poll
Accurate, unbiased national surveys make the difference between the opinions of the wife of the boss or the attitudes of a noisy minority and the information needed to allocate scarce resources and make hard choices. It can come as no surprise that people are prepared to give up a substantial amount of their time to record their responses to a truly independent nationwide poll and indicate their purchase and voting intentions on their doorstep or over the phone
Following the lead of its founder, Roy Morgan Research has established a reputation for independence, integrity and accurate information that matters when key national and business decisions are about to be taken. For more than fifty years Australians have been able to tell governments and business leaders what matters to them without fear of deception or distortion. Morgan matters because it underpins the fundamental requirement of a free market economy – truth, trust and transparency.
TRUTH
Getting a true representation of the various publics that make up a market or a nation relies upon a combination of unexciting but meticulous scientific analysis of demographic distributions that can be verified every five years by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Every poll relies on the integrity and independence of the Census as the platform for selecting which houses are invited to make up the sample of more than a thousand people each week who volunteer their answers.
This is the true beginning of the story, as an army of Census Collectors have had to visit nearly 8 million households to give them the survey forms, collect them and then pump them into huge computers and provide us with means of accessing their databases whilst protecting our privacy. The results are broken down into reports on collectors districts and soon we will have reports that go down to a mere handful of households with the results determining the allocation of government funds and the boundaries of electorates.
TRUST
Ultimately, trust is a measure of the confidence that people can place in the actions of other people that shape the information available to make vital decisions. Faith, hope and charity suffice for belief but evidence of valid, reliable and consistent information are the foundations of trust worthy recommendations and strategic thinking.
Three different points of view are required to develop a level of trust in any picture that emerges from household surveys: how well it fits with our prior experience of the world , how much it helps us to make better decisions about people’s preferences and priorities and the extent that it offers an understanding of differences between the views of people we know have often hostile and competitive perspectives on the subject.
We know that the way that questions are framed, the training of the interviewers who ask them and the quality of the staff that transcribe and keypunch the results have a major influence on the degree of trust that can be placed on any survey results. Accurate recording of interview results and comprehensive coverage of a valid sample of the population is a necessary but not sufficient basis for trust of the results that spew out of computers every day.
It is essential to build up a historical archive of survey results to enable a post-hoc comparison of the actual behaviours of people in the market place or the polling booth with their stated intentions. The closer to the actual patterns of behaviour to the forecast pattern of sales or results across the states and territories, the more trust that can be placed in the areas in which there are very significant differences.
TRANSPARENCY
Every day there are literally hundreds of questions being asked by market research companies, party political pollsters and research students, that become known to less than a handful of analysts. Each of these studies has its own premises, ethical bias, practical limitations, sample size and methodologies that only raise more questions when an analyst attempts to integrate their findings.
We are fortunate to have a number of sources of integrated data analysis including the Morgan SingleSource database, Neilson Single Source and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. For a fee, each of these rich textured sources provide a measure of transparency into the life and lifestyle preferences of the market space.
These integrated software systems have the advantage of making large amounts of survey results available but the very size of that mountain of data can act to reduce transparency. Unless careful consideration is given to the manner in which cross-tabulations and reports have been generated, sub-samples are selected and definitions of terms are specified, there is a danger that interpretations replace intelligence and information.
Ultimately the extent of truth, trust and transparency to be derived from any form of data collection and analysis must be tested against common sense and prior experience. Then, and only then, can we come to accept the fragility of the sources that determine the quality of our lives.

 CONTACT: Dr Colin Benjamin, Marshall Place Associates

Marshall Place Associates offers a range of strategic thinking tools that open up a universe of new possibilities for individuals and organisations committed to applying the processes of innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship.
CONTACT
Dr Jane Shelton
Chief Executive Officer,
Marshall Place Associates
Level 15, 461 Bourke Street
Melbourne 3000
Ph: +61 3 9640 0099  Fx: +61 3 9640 0009
Email: contact@marshallplace.com.au