About Us -- some background.

'WE' are :-

Steve Abbott

I spent most of my career in the financial services industry ending up as Marketing Director at Legal & General. Then as a consultant working with marketing agencies in the UK, North America and Russia advising clients on business and marketing strategy. My role is Marketing Director and making sure that the research is useful not just interesting, .

Mike Hare

I've also a background in FS, working up to MD of Metropolitan Unit Trust Managers, then CEO of Pearl Unit Trusts. For the last 16 years I have specialised in Market Research, planning and running tracking studies for major UK companies. My role is Research Director, ensuring the accurate, and timely, collection of our data, and our insights from it.

Dr Timothy Drye 

acts as our adviser on all the 'more deeply technical stuff'. Tim's Doctorate is in Statistical Physics, and he is a member of the Census and Geodemographics Group of the Market Research Society.

He is regularly consulted on the use and management of databases by major companies around the world.

When we set out to develop The British Population Survey it was because there seemed to be a lack of robust, up-to-date information about the population readily available, and at an accessible price.

Official figures exist but, whilst excellent, they tend to be somewhat historic and not readily available for people to perform their own analysis.

So, anyone interested in the changes which are occurring to society at an increasingly fast pace was left with only the prohibitively expensive option of doing their own research.

Our view was that if we could provide a robust, up to date and comprehensive set of data, then make it available at a realistic price - then enough people would buy it to make it work.

We decided to kick things off by making a significant part of our data available free, and to provide it in a fully working version of our analysis software. For many people who don’t need fully up-to-date data this free version may be all that you need. If so, then we are happy for you to use it for as long as you like. Feel free to pass on the free version either by sending out a link to this site to friends and collegues so they can download it or by just sending them the free version when you have downloaded it.

For those who want right up to date information we created a model which provides users with the option as to how often they want to update. The survey runs every month and for some this monthly data may be vital. For others it may be once a quarter, every six months or yearly (or even just when you feel like it). The point is, that whenever you update, we supply every month’s data from the last time you updated so you always have a complete history with no gaps. That way, trends can be plotted and changes monitored without having to pay a fortune to catch up.

The key question then became - How much is a realistic price?

Of course we have expenses and we are not a charity! But this project will work if sufficient people buy it. So we have set the price as low as we can at £125 (plus VAT) per update on The British Population Survey, and at £250 plus vat for The British Marketing Survey. This gives you a licence to use the data on that machine for a year.

And as we said, the price per update means just that. An update provides all the data to bring you fully up to date with the latest data releases no matter how many months’ since your last update.

We hope you find The British Population Survey interesting, we certainly do. And if you know of anyone else who might find it interesting, please forward a link to this site, or even send them the download file when you receive it. The more the merrier - that's how this works!!

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(c) DataTalk Research Limited

August 2010.

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