YouGov

This morning YouGov asked me about our army (3 units), about the sport I watched on television (1 unit) and about a few other bits and bobs (1 unit). Say 15 minutes altogether. Presumably the army is worrying about its image and has commissioned them to do this work. The sports unit was easy as that was a null return and the bits and bobs were straightforward enough.

But the army units were much more complicated, asking much more complicated and difficult questions in multiple choice format. Questions which seemed to me to assume far more knowledge of and interest in our army than I actually possess. How many people on the YouGov panel have got a clue what the AJAX fighting vehicle programme is all about? Or even know that it exists? So while I might think I have had a good general standard of education and take an intelligent interest in current affairs, a lot of questions attracted a null response.

The army seemed quite concerned to know what I thought about their record on things like war crimes, diversity and the environment.

One wonders what the army will learn from all this. Will they get value for money from the YouGov people? As I have observed before, a far cry from the sort of surveys run by the Government Social Survey (GSD) in the 1970's - with my point being that GSD put a lot of time and effort into question and questionnaire design, time and effort which I don't suppose that the army and YouGov have coughed up on the present occasion.

On a nostalgia note, for a good chunk of the 1970's I was working for the late lamented OPCS, of which the Social Survey Division (SSD) was just one division and with whom I had dealings about the International Passenger Survey, then used, inter alia, to help with estimates of immigration into the UK and emigration from the UK. SSD was not terribly pleased at that time to have been gobbled up by OPCS, but I forget where it used to live before that. Ministry of Information? ONS, which gobbled up OPCS in turn, appears to have published a 60th birthday report on SSD, but I have not yet been able to get beyond reference 3. Beyond both the SSD and the International Passenger Survey still seeming to exist. Not curious enough to dig any further.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/some-important-news-about-yougov.html.

Reference 2: https://www.army.mod.uk/.

Reference 3: https://www.research-live.com/article/opinion/government-social-surveys-at-70/id/4006051.