AMSRS was investigating two complaints that had been brought against Mark McCrindle in response to allegations raised in the ABC TV show Media Watch that McCrindle Research had mis-stated the sample sizes used in several studies quoted in the press.

Soon after the Media Watch programme aired, McCrindle’s firm issued a statement admitting that the methodology line of the company’s internal, unpaid research would sometime record the number of people sent the survey rather than the number of surveys completed. But the firm insisted that the problems were in the past and unrelated to any of its commissioned research and findings.

In April, however, McCrindle and the company issued legal proceedings against AMSRS in a bid to halt the investigation until a final determination by the courts.

Those proceedings have now been concluded and settled on confidential terms, according to an article in this month’s edition of Research News, the AMSRS’s magazine (spotted by marketing blog Mumbrella).

“Mr McCrindle’s resignation [from the AMSRS] means that the society is unable to complete the process of dealing with complaints made against him,” the article says.