Department for Work and Pensions: Opinion Polls

(asked on 22nd June 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much his Department spent on (a) opinion polling and (b) focus groups in each month since January 2019.


Answered by
Mims Davies Portrait
Mims Davies
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 29th July 2020

Opinion polls and focus groups are routinely used to gather insight on communication campaigns to inform the strategic approach to DWP’s employment, benefits and pensions campaigns and to ensure these campaigns have impact, benefit the public and demonstrate good value for money.

In this case opinion polling for communication campaigns has been taken to mean all quantitative research which measures attitudes, behaviours and campaign recall.

Spending on opinion polling and related activities since January 2019 is as follows:

March 2019

£157,979

October 2019

£47,500

February 2020

£52,875

March 2020

£42,875

Spending on focus groups for communication campaigns since January 2019 is as follows:

July 2019

£29,850

August 2019

£48,000

December 2019

£51,000

April 2020

£10,475

Spending on focus groups for social research projects since January 2019 is as follows:

March 2019

£6,500

October 2019

£19,000

September 2019

£4,000

April 2020

£4,500

To note: The costs for the social research focus groups for the primary research projects are estimates, as the costs for research methods are usually combined (for example, by phase of the project); so the cost of one particular methodology wouldn’t necessarily be itemised by the contractor.

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