The AMSR is now a charity

The Archive of Market and Social Research was accorded charitable status in May and is now in a position to start communicating its unique purpose more widely.  It has begun to assemble and catalogue material and has embarked on a second round of fund raising.
The combination of qualitative research, survey data and now big data to provide reliable evidence for developing social and commercial policy is now taken for granted.  But it is a relatively new source of knowledge and insight into the behaviour and needs of people and has only become established in the last 60 years.

The origin and development of the ideas and techniques for collecting social evidence are not well-documented and the original records are being lost as memories fade and paper records are lost.  The Archive is an opportunity to preserve these materials, and with them fascinating evidence of the social, political and commercial priorities of the UK from the 1930s through to the present day.  These records will be of interest not only to historians and academics, but also to current workers in the field, students and the general public.

The Archive is very keen to find out the location of suitable material before it is lost or destroyed. If you think you have material that might be relevant to the Archive, or know where such material can be found, please contact the Archive with information about what you have by emailing: [email protected]

For more information, you can watch a fascinating YouTube video of Liz Nelson and Geoffrey Roughton talking about the Archive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPGP2wIC6pg