Attitudes and Awareness Parliamentary Monitor

Tracking the perceptions and attitudes of MPs towards government agencies, public bodies and other related organisations

The Attitudes and Awareness Parliamentary Monitor (AAPM)  tracks the attitudes of MPs and Peers to public bodies, government agencies and other related organisations.  Two surveys are conducted each year. The fieldwork for MPs is conducted by TNS and for Peers by ComRes. The analysis, reporting and interpretation is prepared by us at nfpSynergy.

The AAPM helps public bodies and government agencies understand how effective they are at working with MPs and Peers: by providing ongoing tracking and performance benchmarks.  Current clients include the Audit Commission, the Health and Safety Executive and Ofsted.

Benefits of regular monitoring of the attitudes and awareness of MPs and Peers

The majority of government agencies and public bodies are accountable to Parliament, Government Departments and Ministers. However, it is often both time-consuming and expensive to track how effective an organisation is in creating the desired impression with MPs.  The AAPM provides an easy and cost-effective way of tracking the views and impressions of MPs.  Whilst anecdotal information and feedback may prove useful in assessing the impact of communications, a structured and regular poll provides an objective benchmark against which to measure communication success.

As the second chamber of Parliament, the House of Lords plays a key role in legislating, debating and questioning the executive and as a revising chamber for many important and controversial Bills.  Therefore, gauging the opinions of Peers is equally as crucial to this monitoring process.  

By creating a syndicate, individual public bodies and government agencies are able to get more frequent and more detailed information ( than an individual organisation would get for the same budget. The benefit of twice yearly monitoring is that individual organisations can quickly and definitively see the results of a public affairs initiative or strategy and track their communications success.

There are many other specific benefits of joining the AAPM, including access to:

• Research for each participant body or agency on their effectiveness as ranked by MPs. Each participant will also be able to nominate a body or an agency against which they would like to compare themselves
• Data about the most frequent and the most influential ways in which MPs come into contact with government agencies and public bodies in general and specifically about named agencies and bodies too. This data will help make sure that agencies and bodies are managing their parliamentary contact in a focused and targeted way around the contact mechanisms that really work
• Questions on MPs awareness of specific public or parliamentary campaigns that an individual agency or body is running. This will help agencies understand whether the campaigns they are running are hitting home
• Results for all the agencies and bodies in the research – not just your own – allowing participants to judge their performance relative to others as well as in absolute terms
• The opportunity for agencies to add specific questions (for an additional cost), the results of which are private to the agency or body concerned
• An opportunity once a year to see MPs verbatim comments regarding each participant agency or body
• Headline results cross-tabulated by political party, marginality of seat, broad geographical areas, gender, and age

Package for participants in the AAPM

As part of the package each participant is entitled to the following:

• The name of their agency or body on the list of named agencies and bodies on the questionnaire
• The name of another agency or body of their choice added to the list for comparison purposes
• The complete data tables with the entire general data of MPs relating to all the agencies and bodies in the poll
• A PowerPoint presentation and analysis of the results, which will be sent to each participant by email and in hard copy format
• A single A4 sheet of performance indicators for each participant will be sent out to allow the top line results to be distributed across the organisation simply and effectively
• In-house presentations after each wave to allow presentation of the results and discussion of their implications for the government agencies and public bodies

What questions will be asked and to whom?

For a draft questionnaire please contact Gemma Tracey.  We always welcome comments from potential participants about the questions or suggestions for alternatives. We are very happy to add specific questions for your particular public body or government agency to a data wave for an agreed additional cost.

The costs and timing of the Attitudes and Awareness Parliamentary Monitor

The first poll went out in October 2004, and the research is repeated every autumn. The cost is £6,000 for the MPs survey, and £3,000 for surveying the Lords.  

If you would like a presentation on the benefits of joining the monitor, details about costs or have any other questions, please contact Gemma Tracey.