Spotlight just from a numerical, statistical standpoint, you could say they are only a small part of society, so they are not very important, mathematically, in the work you are doing. If you just crunch the numbers, theres lots of important groups important in that they have questions, need answers and need someone to listen to them that cant be heard. It is important that agencies come to the issue with an understanding and sensitivity to it. Part of the problem is segmentation, which Shaw says is used primarily to make life easier for the researcher, rather than for the benefit of society as a whole, or for minority groups. Shaw says that market research underplays the important impact it can have on helping achieve greater societal acceptance for marginalised groups. The research industrys job is not just to record what is going on in society; it takes an important role in defining and shaping that society, Shaw says. Society uses the data we produce to understand itself. If we get it wrong, society will understand itself in a different way maybe even the wrong way. Pounds and pence samples, taking ethnicity into account, and swallow the costs. Ive started up my own fieldwork agency, but I dont look at the costs that I have to incur to provide the services that clients are looking for and say, well, the client should be paying me to be able to offer them I have to do that as a business, he argues. If you want to compete in the future, youve got to do what youve got to do to compete, and this is just one of those things its a cost of doing business. A question of wording The lack of best-practice guidance on the specifics of wording is a problem, according to Cole. She fears that issues such as gender identity are not being included in samples because of reticence on the part of researchers over the best language to use, and the best categories to employ. For sensitive information pertaining to a persons health, sexuality, identity or race, getting the language right is crucial if people are to be encouraged to engage with the industry and respond to surveys when requested, thereby providing a more representative sample. If youre an agency and you want to ask about sexual orientation, there isnt an MRS, or otherwise provided, best-practice guide that says heres the wording; weve consulted with groups; weve all agreed; here are the responses; here are the orders, Cole says. Of course, that makes people anxious, because the last thing people want to do in this situation is ask something badly and thats actually a big barrier to agencies and clients doing it right now. Cole is currently leading the MRSs work to provide the necessary best-practice If we get it wrong, society will understand itself in a different way maybe even in the wrong way Cost is one barrier to expanding nationally representative surveys. Currently, to commission surveys with minority audiences, panels tend to charge a premium for each survey. The lower the incidence of a sample, the higher the cost per interview (CPI). In 2019, Michael Brown, chair of MRSpride, and group partner, insight and cross-culture, at UM, collated aggregated CPIs following a sample brief sent to eight UK panels to understand the cost issue. Brown found that the average CPI to research gay or bisexual men was 12 and for lesbian or bisexual women this rose to 13. In comparison, the CPI for sending a survey to an audience of mums was 1.50. Theo Francis, owner and managing director of GuineaPig, and CoRe co-founder, says that businesses should accept that clients want to have diverse 16 Impact ISSUE 36 2022_pp14-17_Spot.indd 16 08/12/2021 09:48