NCRM Podcasts

This page lists episodes from NCRM's Methods podcast. Through conversations with leading experts, the podcast explores methodological innovations, provides practical tips and discusses new challenges and opportunities. The latest series focusses on qualitative longitudinal and mixed methods research, and was produced as part of the EU-funded YouthLife project.

You can listen to individual episodes of Methods on this page by clicking on the play symbol or title, and you can subscribe using the RSS feed link below. The library is searchable by keywords, such as topic and author. You can also listen and subscribe to Methods on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Use the typology search to search our podcasts using terms from the NCRM research methods typology.

Inquiry into the 2015 British general election opinion polls

Patrick Sturgis (18-04-16)

The night of the General Election 2015 was a surprising one in more ways than one! A series of opinion polls had led us all to believe that we were in for another Coalition Government, but, as we now know that turned out to be far from the case. For pollsters and statisticians it was a night of disappointment and even anger.  So what went wrong and what lessons have been learned? In this episode of the NCRM podcast, NCRM Director Patrick Sturgis, who led an inquiry into what has become known as the polling disaster of 2015, looks back at how events unfolded, the aftermath, the inquiry that follow, what it found and the recommendations made by him and his team to put things right in the future. 

The inquiry and the report that has been published are the focus of a key session at the Research Methods Festival 2016 - Can We Trust the Polls? Reflections on the 2015 Election Poll Miss. 

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