Known and honoured for his political and public opinion research and founder of Mori, Worcester (pictured) has been appointed a patron in recognition of his outstanding contribution to research and for his donation to the archive of significant material, including the back catalogue of British Public Opinion.

He said: “One of the key contributions that opinion researchers can make in their work is to measure the changes in people’s behaviour, knowledge and views over time...the archive will provide what research findings were 10, five, one year ago and given a comparable sample and exact wording (and placement) of the questions, the data can be a baseline which can then be updated with confidence.”

Roughton was one of the original people to conceive the archive – along with John Downham and Liz Nelson he laid the foundations of the AMSR.

In addition to his financial contribution, he is responsible for the scanning system given to AMSR by the former shareholders of Pulse Train in memory of Alan Hendrickson. The material, now being scanned by volunteers before it goes to the History of Advertising Trust (HAT), is the bedrock of the archive collection.

Roughton said: “We have a debt to the next generation of researchers to make them aware of where they are coming from. We make history by what we do; we pass it to future generations by recording it and making those records readily available – not just for researchers, but for society as a whole.”