Exploring the utility of Acxiom’s Research Opinion Poll data for use in social science research

Acxiom’s Research Opinion Poll (ROP), a voluntary survey designed to capture detailed information about household consumption and expenditure across Great Britain, has the potential to provide information valuable for social science research. This paper provides a review of the ROP, indicating that the survey in undertaken through a number of channels which enable Acxiom to generate over one million household responses a year. The ROP micro data collected are used in the construction of many of Acxiom’s aggregate products including its geo-demographic classification system called ‘PersonicX’. The ROP is found to compare favourably in areas such as sample size, geographic detail, consistency and data quality and accuracy when compared against government datasets including the 2001 Census, the Living Costs and Food Survey, the Labour Force Survey, the British Household Panel Survey, the General Lifestyle Survey and the English Housing Survey.