Daily Research News Online no. 6965 - Harris Joins British Polling Council

Harris Joins British Polling Council

June 26 2007

Harris Interactive, a major player in the US body establishing uniform standards of disclosure for the conducting of opinion polls, has taken up membership of its UK equivalent, the British Polling Council (BPC).

The BPC was founded in 2004 to implement uniform standards of disclosure to give consumers an adequate basis for judging the reliability of findings. The UK organisation was established along the same lines as the National Council on Public Polls (NCPP) in the United States, which is chaired by Humphrey Taylor, Chairman of The Harris Poll.

Taylor explained the reason for joining the BPC: 'As we expand our global footprint to meet our clients' growing demands for multi-country, multi-lingual, multi-mode surveys, it is very important that polls fully disclose the information needed by the media, policymakers and the public to judge the methods and relevance, reliability and timeliness of published polls.'

George Terhanian, President of Harris Interactive in Europe reiterated: 'The most important role of a public opinion poll is to ensure that the voice of the public is heard.'

Founder BPC members include:

CommunicateResearch
ICM
Ipsos MORI
NOP
ORB
Populus
TNS System 3
YouGov.

The organisation is headed by John Barter who is ex Chairman of NOP and past Chairman of the Market Research Society. Membership is limited to organisations which can demonstrate that the sampling methods and weighting procedures used are designed to accurately represent the views of all people within designated target groups. The organisation is online at www.britishpollingcouncil.org , while its US counterpart is on the web at www.ncpp.org . Harris Interactive is at www.harrisinteractive.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.