TSAPI is an independent initiative supported by the Association for Survey Computing (ASC) and companies including Cobalt Sky, Bayes Price, Digital Taxonomy and Askia.

The aims of the non-profit initiative are to develop the role of market research within wider business intelligence and improve connectivity, both within the research industry and with other sectors.

There is currently no accepted standard of exchanging survey data directly. Existing accepted file-based standards have been used as the foundation of the new TSAPI code, which is publicly available on the TSAPI website.

Matt Gibbs, managing director at Bayes Price, said: "Data feeds the 21^st century digital economy and TSAPI provides a chance to plug our market research services into the wider economic system. 

"Everybody is freely contributing their time and resources to the initiative, and TSAPI’s strategic objectives are to help preserve and develop market research’s position at the heart of businesses intelligence, to improve connectivity, facilitate innovation, and act as a bridge for our valuable market research insights to flow out into other industries and sectors."