At the March 2009
ISO Technical Meeting to discuss the international service standard for market,
social and opinion research, ISO 20252, it was agreed that the update to the
standard would be moved forward 12 months.
The demand for this came mainly from those countries that have
successfully implemented the standard – including Spain,
the Netherlands, UK and Australia – and have identified
implementation issues which need to be addressed.
At the end of the
successful two-day meeting in Madrid
it was agreed that the update would focus on four key areas:
1. Update the Quality Management System requirements and review
the Scope of the standard to address issues such as partial accreditation of
organisations. This task force is being
lead by Sweden and Australia.
2. Review the
standard and update where further clarification is required. This is being driven by the experiences of
the countries that have implemented the standard. In addition, separate
guidance is being drafted on third party assessment and certification to the
standard. Both activities are being led by the UK
and the Netherlands.
3. Appraise the
standard in light of new and emerging technologies for survey sampling and
statistics. By embracing these
developments any update will be sufficiently technology neutral to future proof
the standard. The US is leading
this activity.
4. Review the access
panel standard, ISO 26362, incorporate any of the process requirements from
this currently not covered in ISO 20252 and appraise new and emerging data
collection techniques to ensure the standard covers these robustly. Canada is leading this review.
All task forces
are due to send their revisions to ISO later in the autumn in preparation for
the next ISO meeting, which is in London on 10-11 November. It is hoped that sufficient progress will be
made that a revised version of the standard will be available for industry
consultation in the latter half of 2010.
Stig Holmer, efamro
President, stated in response to the latest news about the ISO update,
“The increasing globalisation of the research sector makes standards such as
ISO 20252 ever more vital to ensuring the delivery of robust, quality research
wherever it takes place. efamro
will be closely involved in the ISO update as several members and
representatives are directly involved in the ISO Technical Committee and
taskforces. Once the revised standard is
issued we will consult with all efamro members to ensure that it
works well for everybody”.