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.
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.