The study reported industry growth of 9.9% over the past 12 months (up from 2.7% in November 2013 ) and forecast growth of 10.2% over the next 12 months (up from 8.5% in November 2013 ). Although RSM cautioned that there was a tendency among researchers to overestimate growth.

A net 67% of those questioned ( 187 researchers) expect the economy to improve; 46% thought the same for their business and 35% thought so for the research sector.

And in terms of research methodology almost all ( 98%) said they had used ‘traditional’ methods in the past 12 months while 78% agreed that ‘the quality and rigour of traditional fieldwork is still a benefit compared to newer approaches of gathering and analysing data’.