On 24th April, the Assisted Dying Bill fell in the House of Lords. Not because it lacked public support or because it was voted down. Instead, a small number of peers ran down the clock through procedural delay, despite it being passed by the House of Commons last year.

Research and polling was referenced throughout the debate, yet public opinion was often misrepresented, notably by lords opposed to law change. Years of polls point to the same result: consistent public support of assisted dying for terminally ill adults.

In the closing session Baroness Mattinson, a former director of strategy at 10 Downing Street and the current president of the Market Research Society, referenced the consistency of that picture in her speech, drawing on the British Social Attitudes Survey from March alongside a wider body of data.

She highlighted that not only does general support far outweigh opposition, but research shows that support for the proposed assisted dying laws actually deepens the more people understand the issue, not less.

MRS describes research as the “hidden, yet defining, factor between success and failure in well informed social and political decisions”. Confidence in the House of Lords and in politics more broadly is currently very low. In a recent poll more than half of respondents ( 53%) said the lords’ failure to allow the bill to complete its stages had reduced their trust in how parliament works.

Too often the general public does not feel listened to, and this is a great example of the disconnect between public opinion and the actions of parliament, and the important role research can play to bridge that gap.

Numerous independent agencies have measured public opinion on the topic and found that the majority support the principle of assisted dying for terminally ill adults, typically between 60% and 85%. Given the topic, many of these are not passive views. They can be deeply personal, shaped by their own experiences or those of people close to them. MRS places the highest value on presenting an objective and truthful representation of people’s views. On assisted dying, that objective picture has been stable for years.

In the Lords, Baroness Mattinson also noted how unusual it is for a proposed social reform to meet such little public opposition. Who commissions the research has made almost no difference to the outcome, provided the questions are designed neutrally and without an agenda.

Where polls on assisted dying do produce starkly different results it is worth asking why they diverge from the broader evidence. They are the anomaly, and the way the questions were constructed tends to be the clearest explanation. We spend considerable time as an industry on technical data quality measures, but wording and question design can undermine all of it before the fieldwork has even begun. We all know that the framing and clarity of a survey is paramount.

There are deeply held personal and faith-based views on assisted dying, and those perspectives are a legitimate part of the debate, but there is a difference between holding a position and commissioning research designed to validate it. Whatever your starting point, the researcher’s responsibility is to reflect public opinion accurately, not to construct a methodology that leads respondents toward a predetermined conclusion.

A number of polls have pointed to declining support, overwhelming public concern, or ambivalence towards the bill and the questions behind them command closer inspection. Asking respondents to read through lengthy statements on parliamentary procedure before giving their view, or priming them with leading and loaded language will skew the results. Excessive grid questions and drawn out lines of questioning reduce respondent engagement, and that has a direct negative impact on data quality.

Each of these issues has featured in polls on this topic that have made it into mainstream media coverage and parliamentary debate. As industry veteran Peter Kellner wrote on the subject, “what is wholly wrong is to test factors on only one side of the argument and present the findings as a definitive portrait of public mood”.

It is relatively rare for research to consistently participate in law-making this directly. Most polling captures a moment or feeds into a news cycle. The Assisted Dying Bill has been different, with polling data embedded throughout the parliamentary process, cited in debates and speeches, and used to frame the argument on both sides in the media.

We’ll soon find out whether MPs have the opportunity to re-introduce the Assisted Dying Bill in the next parliamentary session. Whatever the outcome, research has played a vital role in this debate. As researchers, the standard we apply when the stakes are this high matters, not just for the credibility of our industry, but for the people this bill is trying to help.

Alex Morrison is co-founder at Obsurvant